Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ) (NASDAQ:ERIC) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Carl Mellander: Yes. Thanks, Sebastien. Well, as you know, we haven’t issued any particular profitability guidance for Cloud Software & Services. We are on a turnaround journey. I think 2023 shows significant progress there, and we delivered SEK 1.7 billion EBITA for the full year. We continue there with actions. It’s about commercial discipline. It’s about automating to take cost out of service delivery basically and also ensuring that we exit from subscale parts of our portfolio, if any, and manage the portfolio in as optimized way as possible. So that will continue. Then of course, we keep on investing in this business. It’s a long-term, very promising area. Where you mentioned before, the need for operators to come into 5G core as well as stand-alone, of course, and that sits in this segment.

So I think that gives a good opportunity for the future as well as that starts to happen as a strong trend. Then you asked about the Networks gross margin. Yes, good outcome in the fourth quarter. As you saw, we are guiding for the first quarter between 39% and 41%. How the rest of the year plays out has a lot to do with the big macro picture that we talk about, namely how will markets behave now, and we are cautious there. We talk about the continued challenges. Depending on the previous question, what happens in North America, of course, we will see different outcomes on the gross margin as well and the top line in the network. So I think that’s probably what we can say at this stage.

Börje Ekholm: I think it’s also fair to say that what we – you know our focus on gross margin is being one of the key drivers because what I think it does a couple of things. It keeps us focused on commercial discipline. But at the same time, it drives our product development because if we can invest in technology that drives down our cost to deliver and serve customers, it helps the gross profit. So for us, the gross margin has been critical. And that’s something that we have invested quite a lot in the last few years, and we continue to do. Then exactly how, as Carl said, the gross margin develops, depends on that mix between products and mix between markets and mix between different parts of the company. So in the same way as trying to predict the future.

It’s easy to have an opinion. It’s just hard to be right. I think what we need to do here is to really plan for how do we put ourselves in the best possible position when we have a more, call it, rational or more normal market environment that we expect will come. So it’s all about putting ourselves at the best possible competitive position at that point in time.

Peter Nyquist: Thanks, Börje. Thanks, Carl, and thanks, Sebastien. And thank you all. And this will actually conclude my 31st and last earnings call here at Ericsson. And it has been sort of 10 fantastic years here at Ericsson. And it’s been a real pleasure working together with all my outstanding colleagues here at Ericsson, especially Börje and Carl and the whole IR team. But also interacting with everybody following Ericsson, it has been a true privilege. So again, really big thank you to you all.

Börje Ekholm: Thank you.

Carl Mellander : Thank you.

Peter Nyquist: Thanks all.+

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