artificial intelligence<\/a> business on Thursday, after \u200cthe network gear maker beat market expectations for quarterly comparable operating profit, \u200csending its shares to their highest level in 16 years..<\/p>\nComparable operating profit jumped 54% to 281 \u200bmillion euros ($329 million) in the first quarter of 2026. That was above the average estimate of 250 million euros from analysts polled by Infront.<\/p>\n
Nokia’s shares rose nearly 7% in early Helsinki trading, touching their highest price since April 2010, when \u200cit was still known as \u2060a phone company.<\/p>\n
Its sales have jumped in recent quarters thanks to high demand for AI data centres built by so-called \u2060hyperscalers\u2014large cloud service providers\u2014that rely on fibre optic cables.<\/p>\n
The Finnish company, previously known for its iconic phone business and later for making 5G gear, is now one of \u200bthe \u200bworld’s top manufacturers of optical transport systems \u200bafter buying U.S.-based Infinera.<\/p>\n
Comparable net sales \u200creached 4.5 billion euros in the quarter, in line with market estimates. The Espoo, Finland-based group said net sales from AI and cloud customers climbed 49%, as it booked 1 billion euros in new orders.<\/p>\n
Nokia now expects the addressable market for AI and cloud to grow by 27% annually from 2025 to \u200c2028, up from the 16% it estimated \u200bat an investor event in November.<\/p>\n
Net sales for \u200bthe network infrastructure segment are \u200bexpected to grow between 12% and 14% this year, compared \u200cwith a January forecast of 6% to \u200b8%. The upgrade \u200bwas driven by Nokia’s optical and IP networks businesses, it said.<\/p>\n
“As a result, we are currently tracking somewhat above the mid-point of our full \u200byear financial outlook of \u200c2.0 billion to 2.5 billion euros in comparable operating profit,” CEO \u200bJustin Hotard said in a statement.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.8544 euros)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Gianluca Lo \u200bNostro, Agnieszka Olenska, Editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Gianluca Lo Nostro and Agnieszka Olenska April 23 (Reuters) – Nokia raised the growth targets for its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,41872,69,78163,203318,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-393485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nokia","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-operating-profit","16":"tag-phone-business","17":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}