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u/Mustathmir

▲ 30 r/Nok

A simple valuation exercise with Nokia.

"Meanwhile the market still prices $NOK at 3.2x forward EV/Revenue. Ciena trades at 12.7x. Coherent trades at 9.5x." (Source: post by Michael Sikand)

If we assign a multiple of 10x to Nokia’s Optical and IP Networks businesses and a multiple of 1.5x to the rest of Nokia based on last year's realized figures, it implies a valuation of €56.1 billion for the former part and €21.4 billion for the latter, slow-growing part. When these figures are summed up and divided by the total number of shares, we arrive at a per-share value of €13.5 or $15.7.

Now remember that I used 2025 sales figures with still modest AI & Cloud exposure and that strong AI-related growth is expected for Optical and IP Networks. The $15.7 valuation could eventually prove very conservative once the much larger sales figures of 2027–2028 start materializing.

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u/Mustathmir — 1 day ago
▲ 37 r/Nok

Huawei bans leave fiber operators with little choice besides Nokia

Light Reading: Unfortunately, in the absence of Huawei and other Chinese vendors such as ZTE and FiberHome, the only big vendor available to operators in the UK and similar anti-China markets is Finland's Nokia. Data from Omdia, a Light Reading sister company, put the combined share of Huawei, ZTE and FiberHome in the market for passive optical network (PON) products at a colossal 71% in 2024, probably reflecting investment levels in China. With 14% of the market, Nokia was the only western company that had a double-digit share. Calix, the next-biggest western supplier, accounted for only 3% of PON business that year. No other non-Chinese vendor was even named in Omdia's pie chart.

Such a worrying message, how come I don't feel very aggrieved?

u/Mustathmir — 2 days ago
▲ 35 r/Nok

Key takeaways from Nokia CEO Justin Hotard at JPMorgan's conference

Justin Hotard at JPMorgan conference Monday May 19 gave several genuinely important additions beyond the Q1 earnings call. A few things stood out:

  1. The Infinera integration strategy was effectively rewritten after Hotard arrived. Instead of maximizing short-term cost cuts, Nokia shifted toward preserving R&D capacity in optics to pursue much larger AI/datacenter growth opportunities. Hotard explicitly said they “completely flipped” the original integration plan.
  2. Hotard admitted Nokia largely missed the 400G pluggables cycle but said it is now positioned for the much larger 800G transition. That matters because current hyperscaler AI demand is increasingly centered around 800G.
  3. Perhaps most importantly: Hotard basically said demand is not the constraint anymore, supply is. His wording was that if Nokia had more supply available, they could likely fulfill additional demand already today.
  4. The commentary around order timing was also interesting. Nokia is now seeing materially longer-duration AI/cloud orders extending into 2027, unlike the traditional telecom business where visibility was usually only 6–12 months. Orders will also be much lumpier than Nokia's shipments, which will be quite linear.
  5. On IP Networks, Hotard confirmed additional hyperscaler-related design wins beyond the previously known Microsoft SONiC relationship. He said there were “a few design wins getting into IP networks, including on the switching side.” He also confirmed these will be seen in the orders this year.
  6. The scale of the indium phosphide ramp discussed was striking. Hotard described the industry as needing roughly “100x to 1000x” scaling versus just a couple years ago to meet AI optical demand growth. Nokia's San José fab will primarily be used to meet Nokia’s own needs, which to me is notable because the fab is expected to increase Nokia’s optical production capacity roughly 20x (possibly even 25x, based on the analyst discussion). That suggests Nokia itself expects a massive increase in demand for its optical products.
  7. Nokia's new optical portfolio will begin gradually shipping in H1 2027 and ramp up in H2 2027.
  8. I got the impression Nokia's 2028 margin target probably is already too conservative but Hotard is not willing to update it every few quarters.

For investors, the main takeaway is that Nokia increasingly sounds like a company whose bottleneck is supply scaling and execution rather than customer demand. More broadly, the market may still be underestimating the scale of the transition Nokia is undergoing both in terms of the production volumes it is preparing for in optical networking and in terms of gradually establishing a foothold with hyperscalers and AI/cloud infrastructure customers. This means that the rerating of Nokia as an AI beneficiary may still be far from completed.

Source: transcript

u/Mustathmir — 2 days ago
▲ 47 r/Nok

Two Nokia-positive comments on X

1) Investor Michael Sikand on why the hype on Nokia is real

Oh captain, my captain. Everyone is talking about $NOK on this dip. No one is talking about the key man. A few weeks ago, $NOK CEO Justin Hotard bought ~$1.2M his own stock on the open market at an ATH. But that's not what's so interesting to me.

$NOK brought in a data center executive to lead a telecom business. And there's something wild he said on the last ER. Before Nokia, Hotard ran Intel's Data Center & AI Group. Prior to that, 8.5 years running HPE's High Performance Computing & AI business. In 13 months, Hotard has transformed Nokia.

- Closed the $2.3B Infinera deal, turning Nokia from a third party optics reseller into a vertically integrated photonics company with its own InP chip stack.

- Walked into Jensen Huang's HQ and walked out with a $1B Nvidia investment at $6.01 to turn cell towers into edge compute.

- Redirected ~€300M of annual R&D away from custom baseband silicon into optical software and SR Linux.

Then he put 7 figures of his own money in at the highs. Meanwhile the market still prices $NOK at 3.2x forward EV/Revenue. Ciena trades at 12.7x. Coherent trades at 9.5x. In the most recent ER, Justin said something not a single analyst followed up on. "...a big milestone later this year with NVIDIA."

u/KawzInvests and I just wrote one of the best investment research reports we've ever made. In fact, it was one of the most interesting valuation exercises we've ever done, applying a sum of the parts POV attributing different multiples to different segments to understand what this giant is really worth. If you've been seeing the hype on $NOK, it's real. This is still an undervalued business still in the middle of its AI re-rate. If you want the full story and the exact options contracts me and u/KawzInvests are loading here. Our $NOK deep dive is out now on Substack.

2) KawzInvests on the appointment of David Heard to the board of Penguin Solutions (PENG)

The president of $NOK Network Infrastructure division just joined the board of $PENG. INSANE Now look at the rest of that board.

> Penny Herscher, who also chairs on $LITE

> Mark Papermaster, the sitting CTO of $AMD

> Ian Colle, who ran Advanced Computing at $AMZN

> And now David Heard former CEO of infinera now at $NOK

David Heard's resume before Nokia is the part that matters most. He was CEO of Infinera, the photonic chip company Nokia bought for $2.3B. Before that JDS Uniphase, Lucent, AT&T. Four decades inside optical networking. That Infinera deal turned Nokia from a reseller of someone else's photonics into a vertically integrated optical company with its own chips. Optical Networks grew 20% year over year in Q1 2026 and management raised Network Infrastructure guidance from 6 to 8% to 12 to 14%. So the man who built Nokia's optical business now sits across from the chair of Lumentum and the CTO of AMD on the same nine person board.

*****

KawzInvests (also known as Kawz Research) is a pseudonym used by an anonymous financial analyst and researcher. They primarily publish in-depth technology, semiconductor, and AI infrastructure research on X (formerly Twitter) and frequently co-author investment reports on Substack alongside media entrepreneur and investor Michael Sikand.

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u/Mustathmir — 2 days ago
▲ 34 r/Nok

Nokia’s most important AI move has nothing to do with AI — opinion in Fierce Network

An interesting interpretation of Nokia’s appointment of Siemens executive Emma Falck to lead Mobile Infrastructure. The argument is basically that Hotard is no longer positioning Nokia primarily as a traditional telecom vendor, but increasingly as part of the infrastructure layer behind AI-driven industrial systems.

Some extracts from the article:

Executive appointments are usually about as interesting as bus timetables. Nokia’s appointment of former Siemens executive Emma Falck to run its Mobile Infrastructure business is different. It is the most strategically important move the company has made since it replaced Pekka Lundmark with Justin Hotard.

Falck is not merely a strategy executive imported from industrial automation. She holds a Ph.D. in computational physics and built her career across complex industrial and operational systems — precisely the kind of multidisciplinary background increasingly required as telecom networks evolve into AI-native infrastructure platforms.

Her background at Siemens Smart Infrastructure is also revealing. She does not come from consumer mobile or operator monetization strategy, but from industrial systems: automation, sensors, machine coordination and operational transformation. Environments where networks are not products, but nervous systems. Because increasingly, that is what networks are becoming. And the scale of the industrial opportunity dwarfs the traditional telecom market.

Hotard increasingly views Nokia: not simply as a telecom equipment supplier, but as part of the foundational infrastructure layer upon which the next industrial economy will operate. The Falck hire is therefore not an isolated executive appointment. It is the organizational manifestation of themes Hotard has been articulating since he arrived.

*****

The full article is available here.

u/Mustathmir — 6 days ago
▲ 68 r/Nok

Deutsche Bank raises Nokia's target price 69%, speculates on a significant deal with Google and views Nokia as a real challenger to Arista and Cisco

Deutsche Bank is raising the price target for Nokia to €13.50 (about $15.7) from €8.50 a hike of almost 59%. Simultaneously, they are reiterating their buy recommendation. The bank emphasizes that Nokia’s first-quarter report contained a significant upgrade of the outlook for Optical and IP, raising growth expectations to 18–20 percent from the previous 10–12 percent.

This follows a sharply improved forecast for data center switching—the technology that interconnects infrastructure inside a data center—within IP Networks. According to Deutsche Bank, this could lead to €400 million in sales, compared to approximately €200 million in revenue last year.

"Combined with the strong likelihood that this development has been driven by a significant deal with Google, this strengthens the view that Nokia, after several years of development, has now become a real challenger to giants like Arista and Cisco within the fast-growing segment of data center switching involving 'scale-across' solutions," Deutsche Bank writes. Source: EFN Finansmagasinet.

EDIT: The target price hike is almost 59%, not 69% as I erroneously wrote in the title.

u/Mustathmir — 7 days ago
▲ 15 r/Nok

Why non-telecom Emma Falck may actually be a logical choice for Nokia’s MI transformation

Emma Falck, appointed to lead MI, doesn't need to be a RAN guru; she doesn't directly lead Radio Networks, but rather MI, which comprises three business units: Radio Networks (formerly Mobile Networks), Core Software (formerly CNS), and Technology Standards (formerly Nokia Technologies). Each business unit has its own operational leadership that knows their respective fields inside out, which Falck will steer in the direction of the desired transformation.

The appointment is likely a signal that Hotard does not want MI to be just a traditional RAN hardware vendor in the future, but rather a software- and AI-driven infrastructure entity where standards, software, and networks are more tightly integrated than before. A background from Siemens and KONE within intelligent infrastructure and automation systems may be even more relevant for this than a classic telecom background. Going forward, the share of software would be emphasized over traditional hardware sales (which are under threat of commoditization).

The risk, of course, is that the telecom operator business is very conservative and the change may prove too disruptive for operators' tastes. On the other hand, if the old Mobile Networks model wasn't generating proper value anyway (a while back, Light Reading concluded that Radio Networks and Core Software together might have been loss-making in Q1), a more radical renewal may be a rational alternative if the cycle of low profitability is to be seriously broken.

u/Mustathmir — 9 days ago
▲ 40 r/Nok

Cramer: Nokia is a buy

Jim Cramer on Mad Money today

Nokia: “It’s in the data center. It’s considered to be part of the cloud part of that wedding layer cake that I gave you, and it’s just also got a great defense contract. So it’s got the cloud and it’s got defense. What can I say? It’s a buy.”

I believe he's spoken positively about Noka April 15, April 30 and now May 11.

One may have many opinions about Cramer's expertise, but once again Nokia was presented in a positive light, which is likely to increase Nokia's visibility and potentially the appetite for buying into it.

u/Mustathmir — 10 days ago
▲ 29 r/Nok

The San José 20x capacity expansion: why Nokia is an AI infrastructure sleeper

Some investors are hesitating because Q1 earnings weren't exceptional on profit or revenue. That's the wrong lens.

Current profitability is partly suppressed by deliberate investments in capacity and new products. The real signal in Q1 was AI & Cloud orders of €1B or 67% above the 2025 quarterly average, against only €350M in AI & Cloud revenue. A 3x order-to-revenue ratio with 12-18 month optical lead times means Q1 orders are primarily 2027 revenue. The backlog is being built now.

And Q1 orders don't yet include meaningful IP Networks contribution. CEO Hotard explicitly said IP Networks design wins would begin converting to orders from Q2 onward. Optical momentum plus accelerating IP contribution through H2 could make 2026 a watershed year for Nokia's AI and data center order book.

Then consider what happens when Nokia's San José fab (with up to 20x the capacity of the current facility) enters commercial production toward year-end. Customers are already booking that future capacity. The order trajectory hasn't yet reflected the full supply availability that's coming.

The market is still pricing Nokia partly on current earnings. The leading indicator is the AI & Cloud order pipeline. Those are two very different pictures of the same company.

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u/Mustathmir — 11 days ago
▲ 38 r/Nok

Nokia AI & Cloud orders could exceed €4B in 2026

Nokia booked €1B in AI & Cloud orders in Q1 alone, against a FY2025 total of €2.4B, already 67% above last year's quarterly average. While order lumpiness might partly explain the strong orders in Q1, here's why full-year 2026 orders could exceed €4B and what that eventually means for Nokia's revenue mix.

Three drivers are converging.

  1. Competitors are sold out: Lumentum's CEO has stated production is booked through 2028, Ciena has a $7B backlog. When incumbents can't supply, customers qualify additional vendors.
  2. Nokia's San José fab with up to 20x current capacity will be the natural beneficiary with customers booking 2027 delivery capacity placing those orders in 2026.
  3. IP Networks design wins are expected to convert to orders from Q2 onward per CEO Justin Hotard and wasn't yet contributing to Q1's €1B figure. If optical momentum continues and IP accelerates, H2 order intake improves materially.

The revenue math when deliveries catch up to orders:

With 12-18 month optical lead times, 2026 orders are primarily 2027+ revenue. The question is what Nokia looks like when annual deliveries normalize to match a €4B order rate.

Let's assume that FY2025 AI & Cloud revenue was €1B which is a rough estimate, not a disclosed figure. Adding €3B incremental AI & Cloud revenue to Nokia's ~€20B group revenue gives approximately €23B total, making AI & Cloud roughly 17% of group revenue. The more striking number is at the NI segment level. Nokia's NI revenue was approximately €8B in 2025. At €4B AI & Cloud revenue, for simplicity assuming it all flows through NI, that's 4/(8+3) = 36% of NI segment revenue. This is thus a forward projection of what Nokia's revenue mix would look like when deliveries normalize to the current order rate, not a description of today's revenue.

At that point Nokia is no longer a telecom equipment vendor with an optical division attached. The AI and cloud business is the core of NI. This scenario would still represent the early stages of Nokia's transformation as an AI supercycle beneficiary. And the potential €4B in AI & Cloud orders may itself be a transitional figure. Nokia's new optical DSP portfolio enters the market in H2 2027, the San José fab reaches full production in 2027, and IP Networks is only beginning its order ramp in 2026. Each driver probably accelerates further in 2027-2028. If the order trajectory continues, €4B in 2026 could look like the early chapter of a much larger story.

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u/Mustathmir — 14 days ago
▲ 32 r/Nok

The article's four valuation scenarios for Nokia: $9 - $15.5 - $21 - $26.

Author Gav Blaxberg is the 27-year-old founder of Wolf Financial, with a background in asset management at Goldman Sachs and private equity at Versa Capital Management.

benzinga.com
u/Mustathmir — 17 days ago
▲ 30 r/Nok

With Nokia's optical business getting most of the attention after Q1, it's worth focusing on a metric that better predicts where revenue is heading: AI & Cloud order intake.

Getting the growth numbers right first

Nokia's AI & Cloud sales grew 94% year-over-year in reported terms in Q1 but that includes Infinera consolidation and currency effects. Strip those out and the constant currency, portfolio-adjusted growth was 49%. Still great, but the right number to use for underlying momentum. The revenue base remains relatively modest at €350M in Q1. Optical Networks, separately, grew 56% reported or 20% on the same constant currency and portfolio-adjusted basis.

Why orders matter more than current revenue

The more forward-looking signal is order intake. Nokia received approximately €1B in AI & Cloud orders in Q1 alone. Compare that to €2.4B for all of FY2025 with a quarterly average of €600M. Q1 2026 came in roughly 67% above that average.

Why does this matter more than current revenue? Because according to CEO Justin Hotard, optical order-to-delivery lead times are typically 12-18 months, with IP Networks somewhat shorter. This means the surge in Q1 orders is not primarily a 2026 revenue story but predictor of what's going to happen 2027 onwards. The backlog being built now is what funds the next leg of growth.

IP Networks is joining optical as a growth driver

Most Nokia coverage focuses on optical. But Hotard was explicit on the Q1 call: "I would say that the optimism we have on the 18%-20% is across both sides of the business right now." Design wins in IP Networks are expected to convert into orders from Q2, meaning both Optical and IP Networks are expected to contribute meaningfully to the 18-20% combined NI growth guidance for 2026.

The 2027 setup

The convergence of three factors makes 2027 particularly significant.

  1. The San José InP fab with up to 20x the capacity of the current facility for complex InP components enters production in late 2026.
  2. Then the growing order backlog built in 2026 converts to revenue starting in 2027.
  3. IP Networks order acceleration, if Q2 confirms the trend, adds a second revenue stream many investors may still not totally recognize.

To sum up, Nokia's Q1 wasn't just a strong quarter. It was the quarter that built the pipeline for 2027.

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u/Mustathmir — 19 days ago
▲ 29 r/Nok

While optical networks are currently in focus, Nokia’s AI exposure is not limited to optical alone. IP Networks are increasingly relevant for data center interconnect and routing, and design wins here are expected to convert into orders starting Q2. Or as CEO Justin Hotard put it: "I would say that the optimism we have on the 18%-20% is across both sides of the business right now." In other words, both Optical and IP Networks are expected to contribute meaningfully to this year’s growth.

This is also underscored by BofA who clearly before the Q1 report updated its view on Nokia and valued both optical and IP networks with the same multiple:

"The bank’s analysts, led by Oliver Wong, moved to a sum-of-the-parts valuation from an EV/EBITDA methodology, applying a 30x multiple on 2027 estimated EBIT for Nokia’s Optical and IP Networks business and a 10x multiple on the rest of the company."

The underlying rationale is not just growth, but system-level integration. Nokia can combine optical transport and IP routing into a more energy-efficient and scalable architecture, which can lower total cost of ownership for data center operators. In an environment where power and efficiency are becoming binding constraints, this matters.

Finally, Nokia's third AI leg is AI-RAN in Nokia's wireless business which was the main reason NVIDIA invested $1B in Nokia in October 2025. This is still work in progress with commercial deployment expected to follow if trials with currently 10 operators demonstrate the performance advantages Nokia and NVIDIA are targeting. 

u/Mustathmir — 20 days ago
▲ 14 r/Nok

While optical demand explains most of Nokia's recent strength, it's not just that. In IP Networks design wins are expected to convert into orders starting in Q2, broadening growth beyond optical. CEO Hotard:

"In Q1, we also saw strong growth in our IP Networks pipeline as we built deeper engagements with our AI and cloud customers on switching and routing. We were awarded new design wins and continue to build a strong pipeline of further opportunities. We expect this to translate into new orders over the coming quarters. I would say that the optimism we have on the 18%-20% is across both sides of the business right now."

In other words, both Optical and IP Networks are expected to contribute to the 18-20% combined optical and IP networks growth.

Then we also have the third and less immediate AI story in Nokia: AI-RAN which was the reason NVIDIA invested $1B in Nokia. Trials are going on and 2027 will show what appetite there is for operator adoption.

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u/Mustathmir — 22 days ago
▲ 26 r/Nok

Morgan Stanley analyst Terence Tsui raised the firm’s price target on Nokia (NOK) to EUR 11 (about $12.88) from EUR 8.50 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares.

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u/Mustathmir — 23 days ago
▲ 29 r/Nok

Cramer's lightning round: Nokia: "I think it's a winner. It's back. I can't believe it. It finally did come back, and I got to hand it to those guys for sticking around because, wow, I think it's got a lot of good technology."

Video link here, Nokia discussed 2:22 onwards.

COMMENT: If nothing else, this kind of pronouncements may educate retail investors on what kind of company Nokia is today and that it's an active participant in the AI supercycle.

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u/Mustathmir — 23 days ago
▲ 9 r/Nok

Currently Nokia is +3% and Ciena -7%. Might this be sector rebalancing? Institutional investors harvesting part of the massive gains from Ciena and redeploying them into the resurgent AI networking alternative Nokia which quite possibly currently offers a better risk-reward profile following its strong Q1 messaging.

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u/Mustathmir — 24 days ago