HELSINKI (AFP) — Nokia, the world's leading mobile phone maker, announced soaring fourth quarter and full-year 2007 earnings Thursday boosted by strong handset sales.
In the fourth quarter, the Finnish company saw its net profits jump 44 percent from the same period a year earlier to 1.8 billion euros (2.63 billion dollars).
Overall sales rose 34 percent to 15.7 billion euros during the quarter, ahead of analyst expectations of 15.02 billion euros in sales for the period, according to Thomson Financial News.
For the full year, the Finnish company posted a 67 percent rise in net profit to 7.2 billion euros while sales jumped 24 percent to 51 billion euros.
Analysts polled by Thomson had expected the company to post a net profit of 6.66 billion with sales of 50.3 billion.
"Nokia's excellent fourth quarter contributed to a year of high growth and increased profitability for the company," company chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said in the earnings statement.
On the Helsinki stock exchange, the Nokia share price soared 13.09 percent to 23.42 euros an hour after the earnings report was released, boosting the overall Finnish market, which was up 5.97 percent.
Nokia also saw its handset sales figure grow, albeit modestly, by 5.0 percent in the fourth quarter, to 7.4 billion euros, and by 1.0 percent for the whole year, to 25 billion euros.
The telecom equipment maker thus remains in the top spot in the sector, growing its market share to a whopping 40 percent, up from 39 percent in the third quarter and 36 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006.
Nokia sold a record 133.5 million mobile devices in the fourth quarter, an increase of 27 percent as the overall market grew just 16 percent with a total of 336 units sold.
Nokia's strong results were in part due to the phone maker's rapid penetration in emerging markets and to the woes of some of its top competitors, including Motorola, which saw its phone sales plummet 33 percent last year.
The company's Swedish-Japanese competitor Sony Ericsson however announced last week it had booked 103.4 million sales in 2007, a 38.2 percent increase from a year earlier.
Going forward, Nokia said it expected handset sales across the industry to be down slightly in the current quarter due to "normal industry seasonality," but said sales in the sector should grow by about 10 percent this year.
"We believe Nokia is well positioned for growth in 2008," Kallasvuo said.
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