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Technology Stocks : Nokia (NOK) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David M. Sawyer who wrote (1830)	4/22/1999 7:09:00 AM
From: tero kuittinen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

The phone sales were red hot - nearly 100% increase. It's out of sight when you consider that the new CDMA and GSM models have not yet reached the market; this growth was reached largely on the back of models launched last spring. The network sales growth of 25% was OK. Motorola lagged behind with sub-10% infrastructure and consumer product sales growth... the valuation discrepancy between Mot and Nokia is starting to look pretty glaring. Market share gains in the handset market seem to continue, though in network sales Nokia seems to be now just keeping pace with the overall growth. The new network equipment technology should boost the growth nearer to 30% later this year. Good signs are the new deals in Spain and China coming from operators formerly relying on other manufacturers. There is a steady stream of defections to Nokia among operators switching to GSM-1800. What a relief to see the 90%-plus profit growth. Apparently the handset price erosion hasn't had much impact on even the aging models. Now that the new models 6185, 5170, 7110 and 3210 reach the market nearly simultaneously the competition is pretty much overwhelmed by the sheer number of new releases. The 2Q might be the weak link of 1999 - the handset sales growth might dip to 50% until the full impact of new models hits. Nevertheless, Nokia's own 25-35% growth estimate for 1999 is starting to look very unlikely. It's hard to ignore the discrepancy between Nokia's growth and the numbers from competitors with nearly same P/E ratios. Interesting to see how Wall Street justifies these valuations in the coming months. Tero