Kauppalehti is followed closely technology company Nokian twists and turns. We have reported on market rumors that have concerned both the sale of the mobile online business and the CEO Pekka Lundmarkin replacement.
There is a clear reason for this. From Finland’s point of view, Nokia is a bigger company than its size, even though the phone business was sold more than a decade ago. Nokia is still a large technology company on a European scale, and there is a shortage of such here. There are only four European companies on the list of the world’s largest technology companies, none of which is Finnish. Nokia’s market value of 22 billion euros today justifies 129 instead.
The weak development of the technology sector was also drawn attention to by the former President of the ECB Mario Draghi in his reportwhich looked for ways to improve Europe’s competitiveness. So more companies like Nokia would be needed.
The magic word is productivity
One reason is Nokia’s R&D investments, which are the largest in Finland. In relation to turnover, they are still more than 18 percent. A similar level cannot be found among the large companies of the Helsinki Stock Exchange. R&D investments are important from the point of view of the productivity of the country as a whole, because it is precisely the weak development of productivity that has held back Finland’s economic growth.
You can really find enterprise and engineering spirit in the company. When you look under the hood of Nokia, you will find artificial intelligence, the chip business, the defense industry and even the blanks of the platform economy, among other things – all significant technologies and growth sectors. So the potential is there, but something is still missing.
The truth is that Nokia’s share price has not developed as expected for years. Likewise, turnover growth has remained lean. In a large and internationally listed company, it usually means significant measures or organized ones.
Nokia’s golden egg
The management of the company can always be changed, but a much bigger decision for Finland would be the sale of the mobile network business. The number of employees of the business unit in question is precisely in Finland, as well as the related product development.
Less attention has been paid to the Technology business unit related to mobile networks, for which the patents created through product development are important. For example, the unit licenses those and previous patents accumulated over the years Apple’s and Tesla’s for a company like
Nokia expects the result of the Technology unit to be more than 1.4 billion euros this year, in which case the operating profit percentage would rise to over 80 percent. The unit has been titled Nokia’s new one golden egg. Its weakening or loss would be a blow to Finland.