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spk03: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Nokia's fourth quarter 2023 results call. I'm David Mulholland, head of Nokia Invest Relations, and today with me is Pekka Lundmark, our president and CEO, along with Marco Veren, our CFO. Before we get started, a quick disclaimer. During this call, we will be making forward-looking statements regarding our future business and financial performance, and these statements are predictions that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may therefore differ materially from the results we currently expect. Factors that could cause such differences can be both external as well as internal operating factors. We have identified such risks in the risk factor section of our annual report on Form 20F, which is available on our Investor Relations website. Within today's presentation, references to growth rates will mostly be on a constant currency growth rate basis, and where we refer to margins, it will be based on our comparable reporting. Please note that our Q4 report and a presentation that accompanies this call are published on our website. The report includes both reported and comparable financial results and a reconciliation between the two. With that complete, in terms of the agenda for today, Pekka will give an overview on the quarter and then Marco will go into a bit more detail on some of the key factors impacting our financial performance before Pekka gives a brief conclusion and we move to Q&A. With that, let me hand over to Pekka.
spk11: Thank you, David, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. So let me start with an update of some of the strategic and operational changes we announced with our Q3 results in October. We are evolving our operational model to give our business groups increased autonomy and have now embedded our sales teams into the business groups. This announcement has been well received by our customers. We have hit the ground running in 2024. the move to embed sales teams into the business groups happened at the start of the year. We have appointed customer account executives and the country manager role has also been reinforced. The customer account executives are there to ensure that we still offer one point of contact and person responsible for overall relationship management with customers without detracting from the accountability of the business groups. Some corporate functions have also moved the business groups as we move to a leaner corporate center during first half of 2024 we will begin reporting business group regional sales and cash flow metrics to further enhance transparency and we already comment comments the process of resetting our cost base during 2023 we expect this program will generate 400 million euro of gross savings during 2024. If we then turn to Q4 and 2023 full year, we of course saw a meaningful shift in customer behavior impacting our industry. This was driven by macroeconomic environment and high interest rates along with customer inventory digestion, especially in North America. This led to our fourth quarter sales declined by 21% and full year sales declined by 8% in constant currency. Proactive action across our organization meant we were able to protect our profitability while continuing to invest in R&D and we delivered a comparable operating margin of 14.8% in Q4 and 10.7% for the full year. This was a resilient performance considering the challenging environment and lower contribution from our high margin patent licensing business as some renewals remained outstanding. We were pleased with our cash performance in the quarter where we generated 1.7 billion euro free cash flow and we ended the year with a net cash balance of 4.3 billion euro. Positively, we also ended the year with improving order intake. Our fourth quarter book to bill was above one, particularly supported by our network infrastructure business, indicating at least some improvement in the overall spending environment. Moving on to network infrastructure, sales declined by 24% in constant currency versus the year-ago quarter, which had been particularly strong. For the full year, sales declined by 9%, mainly driven by IP and fixed networks. Optical networks grew by 5%, and ASN declined slightly. There was a favorable development in cross-margin, which improved by 60 basis points versus the year-ago quarter, and by 130 basis points for the full year. And this was driven by positive product mix. Operating margin in the quarter decreased to 13.9% due to the impact of lower sales. For the year, our margin ended up at 13.1%, which was comfortably within the range we had shared at the beginning of the year and above the targets we had set for ourselves back in 2021. As you remember, we had capital market day back then when we set the targets for each of the businesses in 2023. Also, if I can give you a quick update on the profitability of each of the units within NI for the full year 2023. IP networks saw its profitability decline slightly due to the weaker sales coverage, but remains mid to high teams operating margin. Optical networks improved, strongly benefiting from the sales growth to deliver a high single-digit operating margin. For fixed networks, despite the sales decline, product mix was beneficial and delivered high Teams operating margin. And finally, submarine networks remained low single-digit but did improve slightly year over year. Mobile networks Q4 saw the continued impact of normalization of India rollout and the dual impact of inventory digestion and macroeconomic pressure on spending in North America. We were, however, pleased to see a robust gross margin performance supported by favorable regional and product mix in Q4. Similarly, operating margin for the quarter was 11.5%, an improvement of 470 basis points versus the year-ago quarter, driven by gross margin and lower variable pay accruals. For the full year, In spite of top line challenges, operating margin was 7.4%, which was within our stated planning assumption for the year, and at the higher end of our targets we set back in 2021. Finally, on mobile networks, AT&T's recent announcement to move to a largely single source radio network was, of course, a disappointing development. As we said at our investor event in December, and as confirmed by AT&T, This does not reflect the technological competitiveness that we have achieved with our products. This has been evidenced by our significant increase in RAN market share in recent years. I firmly believe mobile networks has the right strategy in place to create value for our shareholders in the future with opportunities to gain share, diversify our business, and achieve a double-digit operating margin longer term. CNS sales declined in Q4 by 5%. driven by declines in all businesses with the exception of business applications, which grew. Gross margin improved and this flowed through to operating margin and the full year improved from 5.3% to 7.9%. The 7.9% operating margin we delivered is at the higher end of what we targeted at the start of the year. It is slightly below the lower end of what we had set as target back in 2021. This is due to the increased investments we decided to make in private wireless, which has been consistently delivering double-digit growth. 2023 did see us making progress in our portfolio rebalancing efforts with the divestment of Vital QIP, the announced sale of our device management and service management platforms businesses in December, and the partnership we announced with RedHack. red hat on cloud infrastructure. We also led the industry trend towards programmable networks with the launch of our network as code platform, which now has nine commercial agreements. Nokia Technologies net sales decreased 63% on both the reported and constant currency basis in the fourth quarter, as the year ago quarter had a 305 one of non-cash benefit we explained at the time. Excluding this, the year-on-year net sales performance primarily reflected lower net sales from a license that expired at the end of the third quarter 2023. The financial performance in 2023 was, of course, not what we had hoped for, as some deals took longer to renew than we had expected. There were still some very important achievements. We signed long-term renewals with both Apple and Samsung, along with signing a new agreement with Honor. Positively, as we, of course, announced yesterday, we have now achieved a renewal with Oppo, and we are very close to concluding another agreement in China. With these agreements, we are now in the final stages of our smartphone license renewal cycle with only the recently expired major agreement outstanding. This provides long-term stability to our Nokia Technologies business, which can now increasingly focus on growing our licensing run rate in the new growth areas, including automotive, consumer electronics, IoT, and multimedia. I remain confident that with growth in these areas, we can return to an annual net sales run rate of 1.4 to 1.5 billion in Nokia Technologies in the mid-term. Enterprise net sales decreased 3% in constant currency in Q4 in comparison to a very strong year ago quarter. However, for the full year, we grew 16%, which shows strong continued momentum. Overall customer engagement also remains strong as we added 151 new enterprise customers in the quarter. Private wireless continued to show strong growth in 2023 and now has more than 710 customers. You can also see on the right-hand side of this slide a breakdown of the 2.3 billion euro of enterprise sales we had in 2023. We wanted to give a bit more color around the components of our enterprise business. Almost half of our enterprise sales come from areas where we sell our NI products into targeted enterprise verticals, particularly those that value mission-critical networks. Private wireless is now just over a quarter of our enterprise sales, having grown strongly for several years. And then web scale is an increasingly important opportunity for us as well. Now I will hand over to Marko to go through the financials in more detail.
spk12: Thank you, Petka, and good morning, good afternoon from MISA as well. And let's start by looking at the regional performance of the businesses. And in quarter four, all regions declined and we saw growth in Middle East and Africa. Most notably, North America declined once again and reflected the inventory digestion and macro uncertainty which has been dominating most of the year. India declined by 30% and this was related to the 5G deployments that continued to normalize. And in Europe we saw meaningful decline in the quarter and some of which was driven by Nokia technologies which is entirely reported in the Europe numbers. Otherwise the decline was mainly driven by mobile networks and network infrastructure. And then looking at the operating profit in the quarter, Pekka explained a number of these drivers already, but a few things that I want to point out. And first one is group common contribution, which was better than a year ago quarter. And this was trimmed by venture fund where the performance improved. In mobile networks and cloud and network services, they improved somewhat year on year. And then, however, the maturity of the decline was driven by Nokia technologies with a year ago quarter benefited from the 305 million one-off that Becca mentioned. And then moving to our cash position in quarter four, we had a strong quarter and ended the year with 4.3 billion of net cash, an increase of 1.3 billion compared to quarter three. And this is mainly reflected strong quarter four profits and a significant inflow of cash related to networking capital. And this was due to both lower inventories as well as receivables, which benefited from partial prepayment of the licensing agreement that was made in 23. And during quarter four, we returned over 200 million to shareholders through dividends. and the completion of the second tranche of our two-year 600 million share buyback program. In the full year, 23 returned over 900 million to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. Free cash flow the full year was just over 800 million, and this is 34% conversion compared to operating profit. And this was in line with our guidance of 20 to 50%
spk04: for the year.
spk12: Then turning to our 24 cash flow outlook, we try to provide a view here on the moving parts in the 30 to 60% free cash flow conversion from comparable operating profit that we have guided for. We do expect to see a positive impact from our operational and networking capital in 24 as we continue to see some reduction from the buildup we saw during the past two years. And then we expect cash taxes to be about 500 million in 24. And then we assume also cash flow related to restructuring of about 550 million. Although I would like to note that we also target to achieve the 500 million in-year cost savings in 24. And these related both the program we just launched but also the final savings of our prior 21 program. And then finally, Nokia Technologies, we expect cash generation to be approximately 700 million below operating profit. And this is due to prepayments that we received in 23. But from 25 and onward, we expect greater alignment between Nokia Technologies cash generation and operating profit. So taking these into consideration, we should land into the 30 to 60% conversion rates. Then as you look out to 26, you can see that we are well on track to reach our target of 55 to 85 conversion, especially as Nougat Technologies' cash generation starts to align more with its operating profit. And then at the end of 23, our net cash represented about 19% of our net sales, which is above the target of 10 to 15% that we laid out in the beginning of the year. And given this strong gas position, the board of directors will propose an increase in our dividend to 13 cents per share. And the board is also proposing to initiate a new buyback program of 600 million over two years. And given the ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty and industry challenges, we feel it is prudent to take a measured approach to getting to the 10 to 15% net cash target. And if we now look at the 24, you can see in the presentation of the release the planning assumptions we have for our business groups in 2004. And as you can see, these are well aligned with the commentary we provided back in December. I will not go into detail on each number, but you will note that we provide a net sale assumption by business group instead of the targeted addressable market assumptions we have provided in the past. which we hope gives greater transparency as well. And piecing all of these assumptions together, you can understand our full year outlook for 24. We are now guiding for comparable operating profit between 2.3 and 2.9 billion, which takes into consideration all of the BG assumptions. We also expect the free cash flow conversion between 30 and 60% for the reasons I brought through earlier. And one further planning assumption we have provided that I would like to highlight is around the seasonality that we expect in 24. We expect Q1 net sales in all network businesses to show a largely normal seasonal decline sequencing. And since 2016, the average Q1 sequential decline in sales has been 23%. And we expect significant seasonality in profit generation in 24, with low sales coverage to wait on operating profit in quarter one, especially in MN and CNS. And then the company then expects progressive improvement in these businesses throughout the year. I also want to draw your attention to some changes that we will be making to disclosures and accounting for 2024. These changes are being made to enhance transparency and further support understanding of financials of our business groups. First, by quarter two at the latest, we start disclosing regional sales and cash flow metrics by business group. provide a more complete picture of the individual parts of the business and the second is that we will change the way of account for the impact of our venture funds historically they have been recorded in other operating income expense and therefore included in our operating profit but going forward we will now report these in financial income and expenses And we believe that this makes sense given the volatility of these valuations in recent years. And with that, back to you, Pekka, for some final thoughts before Q&A.
spk11: Thanks, Marko. And just very quickly, before we turn to Q&A, let me conclude with a couple of remarks. First of all, as already discussed, we faced a highly challenging environment in 2023, but considering the 8% decline in net sales I believe we delivered a pretty resilient financial performance. Our business group did a good job maintaining profitability and still delivering on operating margin targets as we set at the start of the year. We also delivered a solid cash performance in line with the guidance we gave at the start of the year. This is enabling the board to propose an increase in our shareholder distributions for the coming year. Secondly, we are moving quickly on our cost reduction program, and more importantly, we continue to take steps to increase the operational autonomy of our business groups. We want to make sure they are empowered to take the right decisions to create shareholder value into the future. And finally, while the environment will remain challenging in the first half of 2024, the strong order intake we saw in Q4 points to some improvement in the spending environment, especially for network infrastructure. Also, we are now in the final stages of our smartphone license renewal cycle in Nokia Technologies. This will lead to greater stability in Nokia Technologies going forward and will allow the business to focus more on its growth areas. With that, I will hand back to David for the Q&A.
spk03: Thank you, Pekka and Markku, for the presentations. The Q&A session, as a courtesy to others in the queue, please could you limit yourself to one question and a brief follow-up? Alice, with that, could you please give the instructions?
spk00: We will now begin the question and answer session. If you are also viewing the video webcast, please remember to mute the audio on your computer before asking your question, as there is a 30-second delay. To ask a question, you may press Start, then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the key. To withdraw your question, please press Start, then 2. I will now hand the call back to Mr. David Mulholden.
spk03: Thanks, Alice. We'll take our first question from Jacob Bluestone from BNP Paribas Exxon. Jacob, please go ahead.
spk09: Thanks, David. Hi, good morning. I was hoping you could maybe expand a little bit on the green shoots commentary. Specifically, what do you think is driving this sort of improvement coming through? And maybe if you could just comment a little bit whether you're seeing any green shoots in mobile networks or if it's just on the network infrastructure side. Thank you.
spk11: Yes, thank you. The comment on green shoots was clearly more on the NI side. And of course, the good thing now is that, as you know, we have the four businesses in NI. We had strong order intake in Q4 in all four business divisions of NI. In IP networks, it's driven by tailwinds in web scale and enterprise contracts. In fixed networks, it's driven by government funding, which starts to benefit the market already now in order intake, but because of the delivery cycle then in terms of sales and top line, mostly in the second half of 2024. In optical networks, it's simply share gains because of our strong product momentum and the excellent feedback we are receiving from customers to our to our recent product announcements. And in submarine networks, we already had a strong order book in the beginning of the quarter, but we had great order intake in Q4 as well, and that combination is now going to be driving the outlook for that business going forward.
spk03: Did you have a follow-up, Jake?
spk09: Maybe just on the mobile networks, what are you sort of seeing there? It sounds like it's still pretty tough.
spk11: Yeah, I mean, the market will remain tough at least for the first half of the year. When you look at the mobile networks sales guidance for this year, there, of course, you need to remember that the significant part of that is driven by India. Our group sales in India were in 2022, they were 1.3 billion euros and last year, 2.8 billion. And now we are expecting that 24 on group level would be somewhere between one and a half to 2 billion euros. And most of that decline, most of that decline that we will see in India this year will be in mobile networks. So that already, when you do the math, you can see that that explains a significant part of the drop. But overall, I mean, we are still expecting or awaiting waiting for mobile operators throughout the world to start investing because investments have been very low. 23 was a tough year for the whole market, of course, most pronounced in North America. Fact still remains that only about 25% of base stations outside of China are 5G min-band. And a small majority of all core networks have been upgraded to 5G advanced. And those investments will need to come because without that, operators will not be able to monetize 5G properly. Right now, interest rates are still high. Many operators have high leverage. The good thing would be that if interest rates would come down, data traffic will continue to grow 20 to 30 percent per year. So gradually that will also start to force operators to again invest. But the reality is that nobody knows. when that will come. I'm absolutely convinced that it will come, but we are not yet seeing concrete signs of it happening.
spk03: Thank you, Jacob. We'll take our next question from Simon Leopold from Raymond James. Simon, please go ahead.
spk05: Great. Thank you for taking the question. I wanted to see if you could help us in terms of how the AT&T transition with the ORAN project is affecting your revenue assumptions. And what I'm sort of trying to tease out here is, is there sort of a step-down rapid decline, or is there maybe a long tail of spending before it's slowed down? Just like a little bit of color about how we should think about that revenue impact in 2024. Thank you.
spk11: Okay. So just as a reminder, we said that AT&T represented last year's five to eight percent of sales in mobile networks. So that is important to keep in mind. And that 23 number was significantly, in terms of euros or dollars, was significantly lower than in 21 or 22. So we had already seen a significant decline in AT&T volumes because of their lower investments. We have an existing five-year contract with AT&T that was published in the beginning of 2021. Negotiations are still ongoing with respect to how we execute on this contract. And before we have concluded those negotiations, it is hard to give a clear answer as to how the trajectory of decline will look like. But clearly, we do expect our sales to AT&T to drop this year. We have to remember, though, that when we first of all look at mobile networks, irrespective of this contract, we will continue to supply microwave radios and Femto products to AT&T. And then outside of mobile networks, we obviously continue to remain a key supplier in both network infrastructure and CNS. And those two businesses do not have anything to do with the radio network decision that AT&T made.
spk05: Yeah, and as a follow-up, the forecasting this quarter in terms of the planning, we don't have a revenue outlook, but there is the operating income outlook. And I imagine that that is what's really important to folks. But I assume there is an underlying revenue assumption. You would have given it to us, I imagine, if you wanted to, and you've chosen not to. So maybe help us understand sort of the thinking and the puts and takes on what assumptions you've made for full year 24 revenue and the choice to guide the way you have. Thank you.
spk12: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. As you see, we changed a little bit how we're guiding for this year and we decided to give more flavor and information about our assumptions for business growth. And we believe that this will be more helpful for you to get a better picture of each of the businesses which are then combining the whole company and for the group level we guide on the operating profit and free cash flow and then you can see that we have on the business groups assumptions we have both net sales and also operating margin and then what comes to technology is we have also given you what is the operating profit assumption for this year and also the seasonality we have given you very hopefully good understanding how the year will play out and the seasonality will be I would say more back to normal that we've seen in some years ago as well and very heavy second half while quarter one is about 23% normally lower than quarter four year before. So I hope that these more detailed assumptions in the guidance will give you a better understanding how the company is going and also giving you a better understanding of the different areas and businesses.
spk11: Maybe as a quick follow-up just to put things in perspective in terms of seasonality. So when we are saying that we are returning to a more normal seasonality, How was this then abnormal in 2023? There were two main reasons for that. In mobile networks, there were significant deliveries in India in the first half of the year, which kind of distorted decisionality. the same thing but for a different reason in NI as well. The beginning of the year was extremely strong because there were catch-up deliveries that had to do with the supply chain shortage and the extremely high orders that operators had placed as a result of increased demand as a result of COVID. So that's why both NI and MN had unusual seasonality in 2023 and both of those we expect to return back to normal in 24. Thanks, Simon.
spk03: We'll take our next question from François Bovignier from UBS. François, please go ahead.
spk06: Hi, thank you very much. Just wanted to ask you on the hyperscale wind and momentum. Pekka, you see me in your remarks and in the release quite excited about the winds and the network infrastructure momentum. And, you know, I wanted to ask you, you know, from the switching and routing, you know, are you taking some market share there? Can you elaborate a bit on this hyperscale, you know, wins momentum, you know, if it's related to AI, just to understand a bit better the momentum, because when we look at Arista and Cisco, it doesn't seem they have a lot of momentum. So it's very specific to you, which would suggest that you are getting some market share there. But then you said a bit earlier that, you know, the market share is more on the optical side and seems to be more market-driven on the other side, so routing and seek. So just to elaborate would be great. That's my first question.
spk11: Thank you. Thank you. That's a highly relevant question. The NI business with hyperscalers has been fairly optical-driven, exactly as I commented before. We have existing... optical business with them that is looking pretty good but the main growth potential for us there is really in uh in data center switching uh and i cannot disclose uh the name but but we had a significant order from one of the hyperscalers in q4 we hope to be able to disclose the name also in not too distant future but we are not able to do it yet and this will be driving growth for web scale business in the IP networks part of NI going into 2024. Of course, we have to remember that compared to our competitors, our switching business, data center switching business is small. So we are a challenger. But the good side of that is, of course, is that now when we have a an increasingly strong product portfolio for that based on our in-house silicon which is welcomed by hyperscalers combined with strong software offering that offers a lot of flexibility for different data center architectures. We believe that there is a possibility to gradually break into this market and get meaningful growth in the segment because of course We all know that the CSP market as a whole will not be a growth market. Of course, we target to gain share there, but data centers will be the most significant growth market in the whole world in our industry. And that's why it is so important to increasing the focus on that segment.
spk06: Just a quick clarification on what you said, Pekka, the deal you signed, you can't disclose yet. I mean, I guess it's a market share issue. I mean, I guess you are kind of a market share winner, I would imagine, given your low footprint originally in this.
spk11: Yes, it is a market share win, yes.
spk06: Okay. And so my follow-up question is on Open RAN. You know, AT&T kind of surprised the market with this deal recently. And I just was wondering if you see some acceleration in terms of activity of Open RAN from other operators following that deal. I mean, we are a few months now, a couple of months after this announcement. From what I understand, the operators are also looking closely at it. And so do you expect other announcements from other operators this year of this kind? Or do you really think it's like just a one-off for now?
spk11: Open RAN is gradually gaining speed. I don't expect and I have not seen that the AT&T decision would have led to any kind of increase in Open RAN interest in other parts of the world. Del Oro estimates that in 2028, O-RAN would represent roughly 24% of the total RAN market, so that gives you a perspective. What I really suggest is that people need to follow up very closely that what the facts about different rollouts are, including in all announced projects, how quickly will it be and will it be true O-RAN or will it be O-RAN where you just have the same supplier on both sides of the interface. We have two real commercial O-RAN deployments ongoing at the moment. One is with entity Docomo in Japan, and the other one is the recently announced Deutsche Telekom project in Germany. We have already connected our DU and CEU to five suppliers' radio units, which is more than any other supplier. So gradually, O-RAN open front-haul interface is becoming commercial reality. It starts from simple radios and only gradually moves to massive MIMO, but it will eventually get there as well. So it will be part of the market, a small part of the market for quite some time. But as I have said before, we see it as more as an opportunity than a threat for Nokia.
spk03: Thanks, Francois. We'll take our next question from Sami Sarkomiz from Danske Bank. Sami, please go ahead.
spk08: Hi, thanks for mobile network of less than 9 billion euros this year with low single-digit EBIT margin. Just curious, how will you be able to regain scale and grow revenues to 10 billion euro target? That will be required for double-digit margins in the long run. I mean, if we look at the latest forecast from the likes of Deloro, the five-year outlook for RAND market looks quite flattish, even if you assume some shares from Chinese rivals. Do you have anything else planned than the cost program that was announced after third quarter results?
spk11: Of course, Sami, the cost program is an important element in this, but we also have to remember that perhaps with the exception of India, 2023 was a really weak year when it comes to investments. And when you look at the big picture, only 25% of 5G base stations are mid-band. So that is suggesting that there will have to be over time in the second half of 2020s, there will have to be a significant investment in 5G radio networks in different parts of the world already before 6G starts to come in. Data traffic continues to grow 20 to 30% of the year. And then in addition to that, the Chinese will be increasingly under pressure because of political reasons and because because of the various actions that the Western countries have taken to limit their access to latest silicon. So it is very clear that to get to 10 billion top line, we have to continue to take market share. AT&T is, of course, a setback. From there, we need to start climbing back up towards a market share that will need to start by by three if you want to get to 10 billion top line. It is a challenge, absolutely, and that's why we have provided a fairly low guidance for this year's profitability, one to four percent, and then we commented 26 target at the December event. We are not assuming that we would get to double digit by 2026. We also need to keep in mind that when we talk about the second half of the decade, by then we will have significantly increased the non-CSP business part of mobile networks. We are already now growing, albeit from a low base, fast in private wireless. And then a very important target for the second half of the decade is the defense industry, where the spending is significant. It is currently mostly proprietary military technologies when it comes to communications. And the challenge they are facing is that it is getting extremely difficult to be cost competitive there when the technologies are proprietary. So it's getting extremely expensive. And that's why the whole defense industry in several parts of the world is looking at commercial technologies at the moment such as 5G to provide an alternative to proprietary military technologies. We have said that the actions that MN is taking will allow them to lower the level of net sales to reach this 10% operating margin to approximately 10 billion, as you said. So that is a correct figure that you mentioned. That is our target, how we are modeling the business. Currently, before the cost action started, the level to reach a 10% operating margin in terms of sales was 11.5 billion euros. So now we are taking that to 10 billion euros.
spk03: Do you have a quick follow-up, Sami?
spk08: Maybe a technicality regarding technologies. There was a slight drop in IPR run rate during Q4. Can you elaborate on that and then just update on where we will be after the OPPO renewal? I think previously you were talking about 1.1 billion starting this year, but now I guess it must be a bit more than that.
spk12: Yeah, thank you, Sami. When it comes to run rate, in quarter four we had one license that expired at the end of quarter three. And that's why we see run rate change as well. But if you look 24, so we are guiding an increase in our run rate. And we just cannot quantify these yet because we have still some deals that are outstanding. And because the content of the deals are confidential, we are not allowed to give you that much information about that. But I hope that... Perhaps in quarter one, we will give you more flavor on this as well. And what comes to 24 operating profit, we said at least $1.4 billion for the full year, and this is including the catch-ups as well.
spk03: Thanks, Ami. We'll take our next question from Richard Kramer from Arete. Please go ahead, Richard.
spk04: Thanks very much, guys. Pekka, my question is, I'm just conscious that this year you've laid out targets and talked about order strength at the beginning of the year and then needed to reduce your targets for margins and cash conversion. Now you're looking at a billion of cash outflows for restructuring. And so my question is, how are you going to mitigate the risk of losing sales or momentum or other opportunities in the midst of this reset? And are you confident that you can undertake the restructuring without the opportunities that you've laid out, the green space?
spk11: Yeah, I mean, the biggest restructuring when it comes to customer interface, that actually went live already on the 1st of January. So we did it very quickly. We made the decision late in the year, and we planned and executed everything very, very quickly. So now Q1 will be the quarter of stabilization in the customer interface. And I have to say that when we have explained the logic to the customers, basically saying that we want for each business to perform place highly empowered teams in front of the customer, so as to shorten, simplify the organization structure, and shorten the distance between the customer and the real decision makers for each business, that has been very well received. And when you then complement that with the account executive concept, where one of the sales leads of the businesses take on as an additional responsibility run the overall relationship management with the customer and then to coordinate cross bg matters so that simplification has been well received of course this type of things also always cause calls stability issues in the short term but i believe that they will quickly be behind us and people will start to see the benefits of this new model then when it comes to The other cost savings, in addition to the simplification of the customer interface, there we have to look at each business separately. And of course, as we said, mobile networks accounts for roughly 60% of the action we are taking. And that's, of course, a reflection of the overall industry outlook and the challenges that that business is facing. But this is already also well underway in terms of implementation, and they're the most important goal is really, as we said in December also, is to protect our R&D output.
spk04: Okay, thanks.
spk11: If I just then move on to the other businesses, because this is very much MN-centric, then NI has a different situation because there we have, as I said, great order intake in Q4 and we have a 2-8% growth outlook for this year. So there, obviously, the need to restructure the cost base is not the same as it is in the MN business. And then in CNS, the action is mostly centered around portfolio rebalancing. You will have seen that we made some divestments last year, and we are getting close to the type of portfolio that we are looking for. The rebalancing is not 100% done yet. We are still working on certain things. That's really the name of the game in CNS. And then tech we already discussed because now with the OPPO deal and hopefully the rest coming soon, we will see significant stability in that business. So all four businesses are in a fundamentally different place when it comes to the restructuring need.
spk04: Okay, thanks. And then one quick one from Marco. Again, just conscious that your predecessor had relied in the past on sale of receivables. You did mention that in the statements. Could you give us a sort of rough quantification of how much sales receivables help this very good cash flow performance in Q4? Thanks.
spk12: Thank you. We actually have changed quite dramatically what comes to how we see sales receivables. The main thing what we do when we use sales receivables is to mitigate risks. So it could be country risk or customer risk and also the cost. hedging costs, for example, in certain currencies. So the principle is quite different. And now in quarter four, we mentioned that, but it wasn't a meaningful increase. So in some quarters, we see changes in sale of residuals. And it could be, just like I said, that it could be a specific country or customer where we see that it's good that we hedge ourselves by selling the residuals. Or in some cases, actually, we see also that customers are themselves paying for sale of receivables. And then, of course, it's a no-brainer to do that.
spk03: Thanks, Richard. We'll take our next question from Daniel Gerberg from Handelsbanken. Daniel, please go ahead.
spk02: Thank you and good day gentlemen and congratulations on your end and thanks for taking my question. I would like to ask you a little bit on coming back to the catch-up and the IPR revenues that you see and the question is really If the 1.4 billion low level that you aim for in technologies in 2024, if this is dependent also on that you signed the recently expired name, and if it also includes HP and Amazon that you have litigation for, or if you can more or less meet this 1.4 billion also out excluding these three.
spk12: Yeah, what comes to different deals and exactly their levels, we cannot go into, as you understand, these are confidential. But we have guided on the best knowledge that we have today and what we see will happen throughout the year. And we've been clear on that as well, that this is including the catch-up for those OPPO deal that we just signed. And we also expect to sign couple other deals in technologies that we have that has expired before the year end.
spk02: Perfect and a follow-up if I may on the broadband equity and access deployment program in the US. Have you seen any news there in terms of financing any early order intake so if it's still your view that it will be supportive on the second half of this year? Thanks.
spk11: Absolutely, it will be supportive and exactly as we said earlier, the impact starts to be when we talk about sales, it starts to gradually come in in the second half of the year. We have a lot of stuff in the pipeline that we are working on at the moment. So second half of 24 and then of course 25, it will play a meaningful role in NI. especially fixed networks, but there could also be benefits to IP networks and optical networks. Of course, we need to keep in mind that when we talk about the 42 billion total program value, approximately 10% of that is addressable to us. The rest will go to something else like digging cables into the ground.
spk03: Thanks, Daniel. We'll take our next question from Joseph Su from Barclays. Joseph, please go ahead.
spk10: Hi, thank you for taking my questions, one and another follow-up. So firstly, on your free cash flow conversion guidance for 2024, it remains well below the long-term target, despite the boost from the IPR cash chart payments. I understand you talked about the moving parts with restructuring and also some prepayments already happened. And are there any reasons for us not to expect a bigger working capital reversal given the 5G cycle? And just one new question. What are we missing here?
spk12: Yeah, just like you mentioned as well, that we will have the negative impact by the prepayments that we received in technologies in 2023. And then we expect also the working capital to continue to have a positive impact. But these, if you sum up these, we believe that we are well in the range that we have guided, which is improving from last year Last year range that we guided was 20 to 50%. Now it's 30 to 60%. And then year after that, we believe that we are well in our long-term guidance range as well. So it's step-by-step improvement that we see in the free cash flow conversion ratios.
spk11: And when it comes to networking capital, we already saw good release in Q4 last year, which was one of the drivers. behind the strong cash flow in Q4, there is still additional potential there, but I'm just kind of saying that part of it was already released in Q4. Then there is the 700 million prepayments in tech, or 700 million, no, sorry, I take it back, 700 million lower cash compared to net sales in 24 in tech, Then there is restructuring cash outflow in 2024. And then since you mentioned the catch-up payments, there you have to remember that that will be both cash and revenue in 2024. So that does not improve the conversion. It improves the absolute cash, absolutely, but it does not improve the conversion.
spk10: Thank you. And then just a follow-up on the BEAT project in North America. Just wondering how much contribution have you baked into your 2% to 8% of Niagara from these bid projects in North America? And also, you talk about better orders you're seeing for these projects. And what's your visibility to the timing of these projects in terms of delivery?
spk11: Yeah, well, as I said, the timing is such that we start to see top-line effects of it gradually in the second half of 2024 and then into 2025. We have a strong pipeline of opportunities. If I'm not mistaken, there was something small in the order intake already in Q4, but that was small. So it is taking off gradually, these things, because they are politically driven. They always take... take time, first you allocate the money on the federal level, then it goes to the state levels, and then gradually it fluctuates the different opportunities with carriers. We have not quantified exactly how much of this would be in the 2-8% growth assumption in NI, but as I said, it's It's too driven, and it's not huge yet in 2024. It will grow gradually throughout the second half and then into 2025.
spk03: Thanks, Joseph. We'll take our next question from Artem Poletsky from SEB. Artem, please go ahead.
spk07: Yes, hello, and thank you for taking my question. I would like to actually ask on European development and looking at revenue trends. So it seems to be the case that the declines have been accelerating also excluding technologies-related impact in Q4. Could you maybe talk a bit more about what is happening really there? Is there also potentially some inventory digestion which is ongoing on the market?
spk11: I mean, there could be some inventory digestion, but the real issue in Europe is really the weak economy, operators, high leverage, high interest rates, and consequently, their low appetite to invest. The big question is that when will that start to change? Of course, lower interest rates would be great to that end. But fundamentally, I believe that they will have to start investing again. And of course, they are talking about it, but we have not seen that much yet. What I'm afraid, and this is my big worry, I mean, not that much about Nokia, but as a European, there is a risk that Europe falls behind the rest of the world in terms of competitiveness because of the quality of digital infrastructure that we have. The 5G deployment is slower in Europe than in other parts of the world. Politicians and operators understand it. They are talking about it. It remains to be seen when that will start to change. But I'm convinced that it will change. But these things like mid-band penetration in 5G radio, etc., it is clearly lower in Europe than in many other parts of the world. But again, what we would hope to, of course, see that the operator market in Europe would consolidate so that we would get stronger, financially stronger operators. In Europe, there is one operator per four to five million inhabitants, and that is That is, of course, a totally different level than in any other part of the world. In India, there is, depending on how you calculate, three or four operators per 1.3 billion people. In China, there is three operators for 1.3 billion people. And in Europe, we have one operator for 4.5 million people. So the market is so fragmented that it does need to get consolidated. That's one thing. aspect of the picture. But then there are others, as I said, interest rates, etc.
spk07: Yes, the follow up would be actually relating on some good slides what you are making on switching side. And could you maybe comment on profitability of this business, how we should think about it? Is it more like IP networks type of margin what you're making, sir?
spk11: Well, that is, of course, highly confidential when we get to one product group per one customer group. But, of course, all this has been assumed in the targets that we have, both short-term and long-term targets that we have put ourselves for the NI business. IT business has good profitability and profitability. The targets that we have for that business will, of course, stay there, also including the growth in switching.
spk03: Thanks, Artur. We'll take our last question from Alexander Piterk from Societe Generale. Alex, please go ahead, and if you don't mind keeping it to one question, just give me the time.
spk01: Yes, thank you. Just a quick one to come back on mobile networks very briefly. Could you give us a broad idea of when you expect mobile networks to kind of bottom out and flatten? Is that a 2025 event or will it happen later? Maybe another way of asking this is, you know, at what point do you expect the AT&T 5G footprint loss resulting from last year's decision to wash out of the base? I know you gave some color on AT&T and all the puts and takes, but just to give us a broad idea there. Thank you.
spk11: I mean, I understand the question very well, but you will appreciate that it's extremely difficult to answer, because as I said, first of all, we cannot commentate in this situation before we have concluded the negotiations. That is one thing. And of course, we expect to continue one way or another, at least to continue to be a supplier there as well. Then there is the whole Indian question. Volumes are right now going down. What will happen in India? Which operators will invest and how much and when? How will the 4G refarming take place in India, et cetera, et cetera. And then there is this whole question of when will the data traffic will grow to a level where operators throughout the world, including in Europe, will be forced to invest. So it is simply too early to say that when mobile networks would have reached the bottom. Our outlook for this year, we have wanted to be realistic. That's why we are saying one, two, four, percent comparable operating margin, but we are sticking to our longer-term ambition to reach this, what Sami also referred to in his question, that with 10 billion sales, we target 10 percent operating margin. That's how we are modeling the business, but that does require that we also penetrate into non-CSP segments in the second half of 2023.
spk03: Thanks, Alex, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. This concludes the Q&A section and today's call. I would like to remind you that during the call today, we have made a number of forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may therefore differ materially from the results currently expected. Factors that could cause such differences can be both external as well as internal operating factors. We have identified such risks in the risk factor section of our annual report on Form 20F, which is available on our Investor Relations website. Thank you for joining us.
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