Ericsson

Hello everyone and welcome to today's Ericsson's fourth quarter result as well as the full year result for 2021. With me today I have our CEO Bård Ekholm and our CFO Carl Melander. So, as usual, we will start with a presentation from Börje and Carl, and then we will end this session with a Q&A. More information on that you will find on our website, but you have to join the call via telephone to be able to ask questions. So, during today's presentation, we will make forward-looking statements. These statements are based on our current expectations and certain planning assumptions, which are subject to risk and uncertainties. The actual result made different material due to factors mentioned in today's report of press release and discussed in this conference call. We encourage you to read about these risks and uncertainties in our earnings report as well as in our annual report. So today we're not only presenting, as I said, the fourth quarter result, we're also presenting actually the full year of 2021, an eventful year for Ericsson. But before starting the presentation, I would like to ask one question to both Börje and Carl. The sort of the event that stays in your mind when you think about 2021. So I start with you, Börje. What's sort of the situation, event that you will think about when thinking back on 2021?

I think of a couple of things, actually. The first one is really the accelerated rollout we've seen of 5G around the world. And, you know, cell phone technology has been a fast scaling technology. 5G is the fastest scaling cell phone technology so far. And it's quite impressive to see. I think that's an important part. We have seen our investments in technology and R&D actually paying off in gaining market share as well. The next part, which I think is equally important, is the step we took with the announced acquisition of Vonage, which will allow us to build an enterprise business where we can monetize together with our customers, the CSPs, on the capabilities of 5G network by providing the developer community with exposure to the APIs we can actually develop in the 5G network. I think that's very exciting for the future.

An eventful year, so an opportunity to improve your golf handicap, I guess. Carl, what do you think about 2021?