A good result is no longer enough for Nokia’s investors

The uncertainty of the times and faith in the omnipotence of technology drive stock exchange rates. The Helsinki Stock Exchange has also received its share of investor interest built around artificial intelligence.

Those who announced their results this week Nokia and Wärtsilä are both indirect beneficiaries of artificial intelligence, although their business covers much more.

Wärtsilä sells engine power plants to meet the growing energy needs of data centers. Nokia supplies fast optical networks. It’s about the infrastructure that the world’s biggest technology companies use to run their data centers.

With success, the valuation of these companies has tightened in the eyes of investors. But when the bar has been raised to the height of a world record, a mere routine performance – or even your own record – is no longer enough.

Nokia, which announced its interim report on Thursday, exceeded expectations. The comparable operating profit of 434 million euros exceeded analysts’ forecast by about 50 million. It is noteworthy that sales to artificial intelligence and cloud service customers increased by 105 percent.

At the same time, Nokia’s network infrastructure grew by 12 percent, which was in line with the company’s guidelines. The growth of optical networks used in data centers was 20 percent.

In light of the numbers, Nokia is doing well.

“Our strong performance in the first half of the year creates a good starting point for the rest of the year and we still expect our comparable operating profit for the whole year to be slightly above the mid-range of our guidance”, the company’s CEO Justin Hotard said in the release.

However, Nokia was not able to offer investors a big spectacle. Guidance did not rise significantly, and the company did not offer a significant new growth story to the market.

For Wärtsilä, even the record orders recorded for the beginning of the year and the hefty operating profit percentage were not enough. The stock fell three percent after Tuesday’s results announcement.

The appreciation for the tension of the violin’s strings speaks to the company’s success and status. At the same time, it says something about investors and the story economy of our time. When expectations skyrocket, the company’s business and investors’ fantasy world can diverge. That’s when the good news turned into bad news in the eyes of investors. The glass was half empty.

In the midst of a frenzied market frenzy, analysts have the thankless task of explaining why the company’s share value is falling, even though the order book is pulling like carbon dioxide and the result was the best in the A group. Often the answer is not so much found in the result as in the expectations piled on it.

Maybe we need a whole new investment category alongside growth investing? Investing in a show would mean that you never have to come home from the hearing. Every quarter offers a wild cannonade – up or down. Popcorn is included in the price.