The shares of the Finnish networking equipment provider plummeted as much as 5.62% in premarket trading Wednesday despite reporting third-quarter results that beat expectations. Nokia posted net sales of €5.15B, surpassing the €5.04B forecast, and an adjusted earnings per share of €0.09 against an estimate of €0.06. Comparable operating profit reached €605 million, topping analyst expectations of €442 million, while the comparable operating margin expanded by 220 basis points to 11.7%.
The performance was driven by a 123% year-on-year increase in AI and cloud net sales on a constant-currency basis and €1.5B in order intake for those services, reflecting higher demand for data center networking equipment. For the full year 2026, Nokia guides for comparable operating profit between €2.1B and €2.6B and capital expenditures of €750M to €850M. The company also noted that integration of Infinera is on track for completion by the end of 2026, one year ahead of schedule, and it completed an AI-RAN call in a live network with NVIDIA and T-Mobile.
