NSN reports fourth consecutive quarter of profit

Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) reported a near 15 per cent fall in its second quarter sales of €2.76 billion (US$3.67 billion), although that was a slight improvement on the previous three months.

The decline in revenues was put down to divestments of businesses, as well as the exiting of certain customer contracts and countries. Excluding these two factors, sales declined by approximately 11 per cent due to reduced wireless infrastructure deployment activity, which affected both Mobile Broadband and Global Services.

Gross margin before specific items was 38.4 per cent in Q213, an improvement of 12.2 percentage points from Q212. The year-on-year improvement was primarily due to higher gross margin in both Mobile Broadband and Global Services.

The company recorded a net profit of €15 million, as compared to a loss of €260 million a year ago.

In Q213, Global Services represented 53 per cent of net sales, with Mobile Broadband representing 46 per cent of sales.

On a geographical basis, the year-on-year decline in net sales was primarily due to Asia, Middle East and Africa, Europe, and Latin America.

At the end of the second quarter 2013, NSN had approximately 50,500 employees, a reduction of approximately 12,900 over the past year.

NSN is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Nokia after it bought out Siemens stake in the company.