Well - I guess Thestreet.com, Ms. Luna ("Chink in the Armory!!!) and Chaz all have the same basic premise: abscence of focus on CDMA in 1999 is a big concern for Nokia. This seems to be the fad many US journalists are following like a flock of sheep. I have some dark suspicions about who's feeding them soup.
What's curious about Thestreet.com article is that the site has unequivocally stated that they do not try to predict short-term reactions to earnings releases. Let's see how many new subscribers they gain with this policy shift.
My basic premise has been this: profits created by concentrating on GSM and TDMA products in 1999 were fabulous. Largely because these markets expanded faster than expected, yet were treated diffidently by Motorola, Samsung, Sony, etc. And Wall Street has miscalculated Nokia's earnings potential by listening to the San Diego hype machine and ignoring global trends.
I guess Nokia's 1999 earnings gave us an answer about whether the company got its priorities right or not.
Profit growth was 57% - expectation was 51%.
Handset profit margin nearly 25% - compared to Motorola's "we are prioritizing CDMA" 7%. This would mean that Nokia enjoyed four times higher margins than Motorola. Even though Motorola had brand new models running against Nokia's 1998 line-up.
If this is a "chinked armor", I think it'll do. Apparently Jorma got through the conference call without mentioning the word "slump", which is just groovy.
I maintain that American investors would be a lot better off concentrating on Nokia's global performance and paying less attention to petulant whining about how Nokia is not making BAM and Sprint its priority. If the Sprint's favorite, Motorola, and its 7% phone margins seem irresistibly tempting - feel free to buy it.
Nokia has placed its bets on China Telecom *and* Unicom's GSM operations. This has made China an earnings powerhouse for Nokia and landed it more than 30% of China's nearly 40 million GSM subscribers.
20% of urban Chinese consumers have already purchased a GSM phone. As a result, the sales momentum, retail network, manufacturing base and brand of Nokia is now as strong in China as it is in Europe. This was the winning tactic - not waiting in the sidelines since 1997 for China to accept CDMA.
Tero
|
