I prefer to get my SEC info from an SEC site. Not too sure I trust non filed financial docs. See below.
After Its Warning,
Nokia Beats Views,
Surprising Analysts
By Peter Benesh .
Investor's Business Daily
Is Nokia Corp. playing games? On June 12 it warned it would miss its second-quarter earnings. The stock nose-dived by 41 %. Thursday it reported earnings were better than expected. The stock shot up 15% to close at 19.51. As some analysts might paraphrase from Shakespeare's Hamlet, something's rotten in the state Of Finland. , It looks like a setup by the Finnish company, says Todd Bernier, analyst with Morningstar Inc. in Chicago. "It's the oldest Wall Street game in the book. You lower the bar so far it's impossible to miss," he said. "But 1t's frustrating, suspicious and confusing that Nokia is beginning to play the game of taking its numbers down and then topping them," he said. "Nokia loses its luster. by trying to put the best face on its numbers to appease Wall Street. "It's a question of ethics," Bernier added. "If they do this, few people will really understand their business," Nokia said Thursday its second-quarter profit will be 17 cents a share, down from the year-ago 21 cents. But that was a better showing than it implied on June 12. It also said its numbers will improve by the end of 2001 and surge by mid-2002 with the launch of high-speed data services on so-called 2.5G and 3Gnetworks. (See two related stories, this page.)
Nokia seems to have caught some analysts off guard, For example, after Nokia's June 12 warning, Tim Luke of Lehman Bros. "fine-tuned" his view of second-quarter earnings to 13 cents a share from l4 cents. Nokia beat both numbers. Nokia has cast itself in a poor light, says Carl Palitti, analyst with Gera!d Klauer Mattison in New York. "They said in June that things had deteriorated rapidly. If things were so bad, why did they end up beating ..
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Nokia and analysts agree that the wireless industry won't get a boost until high-speed 2.5 and 3G data services take off. That isn't expected until, the end of 2001, at the earliest. Nokia is pushing. to make its next-generation targets, Koffman says. "There's a reasonably good chance they can meet the schedule. The company is providing encouraging commenta!y on the new product cycle," he said. Nokia says it will resume its customary growth rate of 25% to 35% in 2002. That projection "blew a lot of people away," said analyst Palitti. " A lot of that bullish outlook depends on next-generation demand to solidify. It requires investors to take a leap of faith." .Next-generation wireless will be a hard sell to consumers, he says. "You have to question whether these are services they want."Most people who 'want a cell phone already have one, Bernier says. "Until they bring out something people want that they can't do on their present phone, there won't be a product cycle upgrade."
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Wireless Web is on the phone
Forget the techno-jargon.
Think, "Honey, I Shrunk the Internet." The wireless industry. believes you'll want the Web on your cell phone's tiny screen. And that you'll. be willing to pay for it. For a year, as their rose-colored glasses turned gray, L.M. Ericsson AB, Motorola Inc. and even mighty Nokia Corp. suffered shriveled earnings or losses in the handset business. But the three haven't sat back wringing their hands. ( See two related stories, this page.) While skeptics sneered, the companies forged on with plans for faster wireless networks and new handsets. The first of those, an always-on network, is about to start in Europe. Ws called 2.50, or GPRS, for general packet radio service. It~ success will go a long way toward helping the wireless field rebound -or not. The handset makers, as well as wireless carriers and wireless software developers, are (on a quest to build and sell 2.5
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Nielsen says the success of the Blackberry a text-based messaging device from Canada's Research in Motion Ltd., shows what North American customer& want. They want fast, easy-to-read text, agrees Matthew Hoffman, an analyst for Wit Sound View Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn. "The' response time on W AP phones has gone from 15 seconds down to 3 to 4 seconds," he said, " But even with GPRS, WAP is merely interesting. It's not something consumers have to run out and get." W AP won't survive, Hoffman says. "WAP is transitional" The criticism leaves Martin unfazed. "The things that stand in the way of the second generation of W AP are being fixed," he said. He promises. it will debut by year-end.
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Well you get the picture, I share the view but am just a sharecropping village idiot, a great honor in Finland, I have been told. |
