Rajeev Suri, chief executive officer of NSN, on Thursday said the telecom equipment vendor saw strong deal momentum in India.
NSN is seeing excellent momentum in Greater China, where it is on track to become the leading foreign telecom vendor.
Europe remained challenging in Q4 2013, but NSN is seeing some early signs of increased Capex spending from certain customers in Western Europe and Russia.
“Asia Pacific saw a good performance in Korea, Indonesia and Australia with strong deal momentum in India, Middle East and Africa an area that was affected by country exits during our restructuring delivered very good sequential growth,” NSN CEO said.
Latin America continues to face Capex constraints and finally in Q4 North America saw declines as our large roll out at T-Mobile tapered down. “We are optimistic that our large win with Sprint will help balance our revenue trends in the region in future quarters,” Suri said.
NSN Q4 sales were €3.1 billion, representing a year-on-year decline of 22 percent but a sequential increase of 20 percent. Approximately half of the year-on-year decline resulted from divestments, the negative effects from foreign exchange fluctuations and customer contract and country exits.
The telecom equipment vendor will be sharing more details on its action plan to improve revenues in coming quarters.
Gross margin for the quarter was 37.6 percent against 36 percent one year ago and 36.6 percent last quarter. The year-on-year increase was driven by a higher gross margin and global services due to significant efficiency improvement as a well as a higher proportion of mobile broadband in the overall sales mix. This was partially offset by a slightly lower gross margin in mobile broadband due to lower net sales in the higher margin markets of Japan and North America, costs related to the start of several large new network deployments in China.
During the first quarter of 2014 NSN expects some pressure on profitability given lower seasonal net sales as well as lower margins during the initial phases of several strategic new network deployments.
NSN recent clients
NSN’s recent customer wins includes Sprint in the U.S., China Mobile and Chine Telecom in China, VimpelCom in Russia. Telkomsel, in Indonesia, Chunghwa Telecom in Taiwan, Oi in Brazil, Vodacom in Tanzania and an entry into Myanmar with Ooredoo.
NSN and TD-LTE
NSN’s Q4 LTE sales were strong particularly in TD-LTE. Some of its competitors initially dismissed TD-LTE as a China only technology that might even struggle in China. NSN took a view that not only would TD be critical for success in China, but that it would also become a global technology given that 50 percent or more of the spectrum available to operators globally will be for TD-LTE.
Though the majority of LTE deployments have been based on FD technology, this will start to change with upcoming deployments. This should serve NSN well, given its wins with customers including China Mobile, China Telecom and Sprint. Also in LTE, all three of the LTE advanced networks in commercial operation today use NSN radio technology, a clear sign of its technological strength.
