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Strategies & Market Trends : Technical analysis for shorts & longs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johnny Canuck who wrote (36468)	3/17/2002 1:57:59 AM
From: Johnny Canuck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 68009

Nuked by Nokia Nokia, Ericsson and Alcatel shares were among the worst performers last week, thanks to a sales warning from the Finnish telecom-equipment giant, which said first-quarter revenue would be weaker than anticipated on phone-network-equipment sales that could drop as much 25% from the 2001 first quarter. It added it would meet or beat the first-quarter earnings target, though. You have to wonder now if another, and worse, warning will come from Nokia later this year -- that the firm's 15% 2002 revenue growth target is now in jeopardy. To reach that level, during the rest of the year Nokia would have to attain a 30% sales increase in the network-equipment division and 22% in the vaunted handset business, contends Per Lindberg, a Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein analyst and noted Nokia critic. "That's a tall order, even for a company of Nokia's caliber," he adds. Perhaps more worrying still, however, is Nokia's ability to hit earnings targets despite substantial sales setbacks. Lindberg notes the company has now done this three times in the past 12 months and says investors should view it with a healthy amount of skepticism. The company's repeated reporting of lower-than-expected sales and higher-than-expected profitability "defies industrial logic," he adds. He thinks the annual sales target "is set to be trimmed materially, presumably before midyear." The analyst values Nokia shares at euro16 -- substantially below Friday's close of euro25.09. Separately, one possible ray of light for this beaten-up group emerged last week in newspaper report from Les Echos, which wrote that French telecom operator Cegetel will boost investment by 60% in 2002. online.wsj.com