Note the bold below.
Stan
Tuesday November 27 6:35 PM ET
Nokia Upbeat on Own Results, Not Industry
By Eric Auchard and Paul de Bendern
dailynews.yahoo.com
NEW YORK/HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia (news - web sites), the world's largest maker of mobile phones, pared its closely watched estimate for this year's industry sales of handsets on Tuesday, sending its share price 6 percent lower even though the company said it expects to meet fourth-quarter earnings targets.
Nokia, which makes one-third of all mobile phones, said it now expects only 380 million handsets to be sold globally this year, marking the second time in as many months that the company reduced its outlook for industry sales.
The company, which a year ago had forecast 2001 handset sales of 550 million, had cut its estimate by another 4 percent to 390 million as recently as October, amid flagging demand for standard-issue cell phones and slow demand for newer models.
The forecasts came at the start of a marathon eight-hour briefing session for Wall Street investors held here by Nokia of Finland, one of the world's leading technology stocks.
``Their estimate for cell phone (sales) volumes was maybe a slight disappointment, which explains why the stock is falling,'' said senior analyst Mika Paloranta at Nordea Securities in Helsinki.
In Germany, rival Siemens AG (news - web sites) said it was sticking to its forecast for industry sales of around 400 million units in 2001, while Motorola has previously stood by a similarly higher figure.
Nokia, whose share price has nearly doubled from lows hit before Sept. 11, fell $1.52, or 6 percent, to close at $23.72 on the New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites), where it was the third most active issue. Earlier, the shares closed at 26.49 euros, down a similar percentage, in Helsinki trading.
NOKIA MIXES CAUTION AND CONFIDENCE
Finland's most famous company, briefing analysts and fund managers in New York, forecast group sales growth of about 15 percent next year and continued good profitability as a new range of Internet-enabled mobile phones enters the market.
Jorma Ollila, Nokia's chairman and chief executive, said that that its 2002 growth outlook was based on a rebound in U.S. sales since August and solid demand in Asia, offset by soft demand in Europe that could extend until the end of next year's third quarter.
Analysts sounded a cautious note saying that Nokia's outlook was heavily dependent on a rebound in economic growth and a surge in demand for new multimedia phones that offer users the capacity to swap digital pictures and songs.
``The real issue is how fast the industry is going to get to new product cycles,'' UBS Warburg analyst Jeffrey Schlesinger said during the meeting. ``That's going to answer whether this is a 10-percent or 20-percent-per-year growth industry.''
``The message here is that the industry has got a decent shot at the new, new thing for this industry arriving by the end of this year,'' the New York-based UBS analyst concluded. |
