Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the presentation of Ericsson's second quarter 2026 results. Joining us today, we have Birger Ekholm, our president and CEO, and Per Naviger, head of networks, who will be assuming the CEO role in October. And a little later, Lars Sandström, our chief financial officer, will also join us. As usual, we'll have a short presentation followed by Q&A. And in order to ask a question, you'll need to join the conference by phone. Details can be found in today's earnings release and on the Investor Relations website. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded and that today's presentation may include forward-looking statements. These statements are based on our current expectations and certain planning assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially due to factors mentioned in today's press release and discussed in the conference call. We encourage you to read about these risks and uncertainties in our earnings report as well as in our annual report. I'll now hand the call over to Buria and to Per for some introductory comments.

Thanks, Daniel. And good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. But before we get into the quarter, I wanted to take a moment to talk about the leadership transition we announced in June. So after almost 10 years as CEO of Ericsson, and actually 20 years as a member of the board, this will be my last quarterly results call. Since I stepped into the role in 2017, we've transformed Ericsson into a leader in our industry. I will always be proud of the progress Team Ericsson has made in strengthening our technology leadership, improving our operational execution and positioning us for long-term success now that AI actually moves into the physical world, which I think will provide us with a lot of growth opportunities going forward. I also want to express my gratitude to the board, the leadership team and all the colleagues in Team Ericsson. It's really the quality of our people that defines our success. It's been a privilege and honor to be a team member of Team Ericsson for the last almost 10 years. I'm also pleased to report a solid Q2 where we continue to execute against our operational and strategic priorities. We remain focused on serving our customers, strengthening our technology leadership and driving disciplined execution across our business. But before going into some key takeaways from the quarter, I'd like to introduce Per Norvinger, who will be succeeding me as CEO, as Daniel said and you all know, and he can join me today. Per has spent almost 30 years at Ericsson and brings a broad experience across the telco industry, But he's been in research, standardization, development, product management, and sales. He's led some of Ericsson's most important businesses, most recently, of course, networks, but before that, leading the turnaround of cloud software and services. So I've had the privilege to work very closely with Per for many years now. And I've seen firsthand his deep understanding of our technology, our customers and our industry. But what has actually impressed me is really his ability to execute. And yes, you can rest assured he consistently delivers on what he says he will do. So simply put, it's an excellent choice to lead Ericsson into the next chapter. So over the next two, three months, Per and I will spend a lot of time together working closely to ensure a smooth transition. But please, Per, I leave the word over to you. Thank you, Börje.

And it's, of course, a great honor to take over as the CEO of the company from October 1st. As Börje says, I have been in the company, in the industry for quite a few years. I truly enjoyed being back in the networks business where I spent a lot of my career. So I was heading up the larger segment now for a year and a half. I have to say, Börje, you handed me quite a challenge when we formed cloud software and services. It's great to see that that business is now progressing. I also think we are at a very interesting point in time now with AI really coming in in a big way. Of course, how we build our products, how we deliver to our customers, and of course all the traffic we're going to see on AI in our networks. And I also have to say a big, big thank you to Ljuborje. You're handing over a company in a very strong position, strong on the market position, strong in the portfolio. And it's truly been a privilege working with Ljuborje and great fun as well. And of course, you and I will now meet a lot of customer partners to make sure we have a smooth transition here. And then, of course, I'm looking forward also to engaging with everyone in this forum going forward.