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Posts: 46 | Thanked: 41 times | Joined on Jun 2010
#27
Originally Posted by etuoyo View Post
I am shocked to hear that Nokia's profits dropped from $9bn to $300m in just two years. That is the most shocking profit drop I have ever heard and probably one of the greatest drops in history for any company.
You don't read a lot of financial reports, do you?

First, the numbers you quote are not profit but net income. Their gross profit was actually down from 25B in 2007 to 19B in 2009. After you take from this all the operating expenses (R&D, marketing, administrative) taxes, liabilities etc you get the net income. Because it takes time to cut down expenses, a 20% drop in profit can be easily translated to a huge drop in income.

In addition, they're comparing Nokia's best year ever (2007) to Nokia's worst year ever (2009). The 2010 numbers so far are not as bad as 2009. In 2009, there was a huge worldwide financial crisis, which was also a factor, together with more than 1B dollars of non-recurring expenses.

Nokia is definitely in trouble because of shrinking gross margins, lack of presence in the US, lack of commercially successful high-end smartphone, and losses from some of its other devisions (esp. Siemens-Nokia networks), but looking at net income alone gives a distorted picture and make things look worth than they actually are.
 

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