End of the year look at Nokia

It's almost been 2 years since Nokia CEO Stephen Elop announced the drastic strategy change in smartphones from Symbian & Meego to Windows Phone. The announcement was done in Feb 11, 2011 - a date well remember by all ex-Nokia employees like me. At the time the strategy change was announced all of us knew that a change is needed. Symbian - once the most widely used  smartphone OS - was losing it's appeal. Symbian's UI was unintuitive, execution was slow, and organization was slow and bloated beyond imagination. Meego was promising, but was taking forever! 

A drastic change was needed, but was the shift to Windows Phone - an unproven smartphone OS from Stephen Elop's former employer - the correct choice? Let's take a look at how Nokia has been performing financially, ever since Stephen Elop took over (third quarter, 2010) to today.

Nokia Revenues Q3 2010 to Q3 2012

The above graph plots Nokia revenue & net profit over Q3 2010 to Q3 2012. In Q3 2010 Nokia earned approximately 10 billion euros in revenue, and only 322 million in profits. Not the best performance for a quarter - earning just a few hundred millions for over ten billion in sales means that something needs to change in the company. That "something" would probably be controlling costs, increasing ASP (Average Selling Price of handsets) by focussing more on smartphones, and getting rid of businesses that were burning cash. 

Nokia in Q2 2012: A lighter balance sheet, and a free OS

I’m not doing a full analysis of Nokia Q2 2012 results here. Very briefly, Nokia group revenues were 7.5 billion EUR with a loss of 1.53 billion EUR. A billion plus euro loss cannot be very rosy, of course, but maybe investors expected worse, as the stock price spiked up briefly after the announcements of the results on Thursday, 19 July.

Revenue & Profitability has taken a hit for the last one year, when the strategy of shifting from Symbian & Meego OS’es to Windows Phone has gone disastrously wrong for the company. A very detailed analysis of this strategy gone wrong can be found on Tomi Ahonen’s communities-dominate blog. As for this current post, the chart below tracking Nokia revenues is enough to describe the problem.

Nokia revenues - falling since 2011.

But in this post I try to delve into some of the revelations in the Q2 earnings release.

4 Billion EUR Lighter Balance Sheet

If we take a look at the balance sheet on Nokia's Q2 earnings release, there is a reduction of assets of about 4 billion EUR between Q2 2011 and 2012. About 1.4 billion EUR of this comes from impairment of Goodwill & amortization of intangible assets. This is also explained in a discussion on the operating results in the Q2 2012 interim report.

"During the second quarter 2012, based on a combination of factors, including the decline in our market capitalization, credit rating downgrades as well as our operating results, we concluded that there were sufficient indicators to require Nokia Group to perform an interim goodwill impairment analysis as of June 30, 2012. "

This explains the 1.4 billion reduction in goodwill and intangible assets. But what else did to reach this 4 billion EUR figure? 

"In the second quarter 2012, Nokia recognized EUR 800 million in valuation allowances related to its Finnish deferred tax assets in accordance with accounting standards "

Deferred tax assets is when a loss making company expects to make profits in the future, and sets aside a portion of their losses as tax credits to take advantage of, when they return to profitability. But this is allowed, in Finnish and International accounting laws, only if there is sufficient indication of the company returning to profitability. Deferred tax assets sits on the balance sheet as a current asset, and this accounts for another 800 million of the total 4 billion reduction in assets. 

The rest of the 4 billion is made of lower accounts receivable (amounts due to the company), and prepaid expenses. 

Now, I may be reading a bit too much into this, but cleaning up the balance sheet of intangibles, and deferred tax assets may be to make it more palatable to a buyer. Even though Nokia is currently valued low (it's currently valued lower than what Motorola was picked up for), most buyers would not be convinced by intangibles & goodwill on the balance sheet. Goodwill comes up when a company acquires another company, and pays more than the net asset valuation of the acquired company. The excess amount paid is not treated as a loss, but projected as an asset, which is the intangible valuation of expected synergies from the acquisition. Goodwill appears on the Nokia balance sheet because of the past acquisitions of Navteq, and others. 

Estimates for Nokia 1Q2012

Update on 19-April

Results are now avialable at http://www.results.nokia.com/results/Nokia_results2012Q1e.pdf

I was close on the revenue, but way underestimated the loss. In particular NSN made bigger losses than I expected.


My estimate of Revenue: EUR 7.8B
Actual Revenue            : EUR 7.4B
My estiamte of Losses   : EUR 0.3B
Actual Losses               : EUR 1.5B

Original Post from 14-April

Just to make it clear in the beginning... Nokia reveals it’s 1Q 2012 earnings next Thursday (19-April-2012), and this is just an estimate based on recent announcements made by Nokia. Last week, Nokia lowered it’s outlook for it’s Devices & Services business in the first quarter of 2012.


What was stated
Nokia stated that in 1Q 2012

• Operating margin was negative 3% for Devices & Services.
• Net sales was 4.2 billion EUR.
• Out of the above, Mobile Phone (i.e. feature phones) sales was 2.3 billion, while Smart Devices sales was 1.7 billion EUR.
• Volumes were 71 million feature phones and 12 million smart phones.
• Gross Margins was 25% overall, with 26% in Mobile Phones & 16% in Smart Devices.
• Cash & liquid assets were 4.9 billion EUR.

Interpretation
Devices & Services forms the largest business unit in Nokia, followed by Nokia-Siemens Networks, and lastly, Location & Commerce. Nokia reports Devices & Services sales as the summation of the sales of the Smart Devices & Mobile Phones. In the last quarter, i.e. Q4 2011, Nokia sold 19.6 million smart phones. We know that this number has decreased to 12 million now. Similarly, in Q4 2011, Nokia sold 93.9 million feature phones, and this number has reduced to 71 million.

Devices & Services	Q4 2011	Q1 2012	QoQ Change
Smart Devices Net Sales	2747	1700	-38.11%
Mobile Phones Net Sales	3040	2300	-24.34%
Other (Royalties, Microsoft Payments etc.)	210	200
Sales	5997	4200	-29.96%
Smart Devices Volumes (million)	19.6	12	-38.78%
Mobile Phones Volumes (million)	93.9	71	-24.39%
Volumes	113.5	83	-26.87%
Smart Devices Gross Profit	546.65	272	-50.24%
Mobile Phones Gross Profit	842.08	598	-28.99%
Gross Profit	1547.23	1050	-32.14%
Operating Profit	293.85	-126	-142.88%

Figures in miillion EUR

With these estimated results in devices & services, if I add the estimated sales & profits expected in Location & Commerce and Nokia-Siemens Networks, then it should give the full estimated Nokia P&L statement. Location & Commerce sales have been too small (range of 200~300 million) to impact the top line as much as the other divisions. Last quarter (Q4 2011) it impacted the bottom line due to a 1 billion EUR goodwill impairment (discussed in a previous post). The nature of this loss could be considered a one-time event, so I assume it has no impact on the profits as well. With Nokia-Siemens Networks (NSN), the sales have been declining at a rate of 4% QoQ in Q4 2011. Assuming this same rate continues, this division should generate about 3.6 to 3.7 billion EUR in revenue. NSN is expected to have an operating margin of -5%, or, in other words, a loss of about 183 million. So combining these, we get the expected Nokia Q1 2012 results below (figures in millions).

Full Nokia	Q1 2012
Sales	7860
Net Profit	-309
Device Volumes	83

Assuming no other source of profits (for e.g. royalty payments, Microsoft payments etc.), it seems like Nokia will make a loss of about 300 million EUR this quarter.

Is HTC in trouble?

There have been quite a few blog posts about HTC's 4Q 2011 and full year 2011 performance. As stated here and here, the 4Q results were disappointing, while the full year results were encouraging. So let's look at the company's full year results (adjusted for exchange rates of New Taiwanese Dollar to US Dollar).

HTC yearly revenues, 2009 to 2011.

HTC revenues grew 111% in 2010, and 61.5% in 2011. These are pretty robust numbers. The smartphone industry growth has been between 55% and 65% according to analyst estimates, and HTC's growth seems to be in line with the industry growth. It all looks fine, until we take a look at the quarterly numbers (again adjusted for exchange rates at end of each quarter).

Analysis of Nokia 4Q 2011 results

Results Summary
21% Year on year decline in revenue, 155% decline in earnings per share (IFRS), and 8% decline in mobile device volumes. Things certainly dont look too good for Nokia, especially considering these are Q4 results (the Christmas quarter). As the interim report states...

"On a year-on-year basis, the decline in our total Devices & Services volumes in the fourth quarter 2011 was driven by significantly lower Smart Devices volumes. Mobile Phones volumes were approximately flat year-on-year. "



Specifically, "Devices & Services" business saw a 29% decline in net sales, 11% decline in operating margins. The decrease in margins are quite likely due to the shift to Windows Phones OS, which increases the BOM if each phone (licensing royalties to Microsoft). At least I see no other explanation, as gross margin is very simply revenue - cost of goods sold.

Revenue & Net Profit Trend
I tracked Nokia’s revenues & profits over the last 3 years, and the chart below shows the trend from 2009 to 2011.

Nokia 2009 to 2011

The two peaks in the blue revenue line shows the seasonal phenomenon in the electronics/computer industry where Q4 sales are always much higher than previous quarters. It is interesting to see that there was a good peak in Q4 2010, but it was followed by a quick decline in Q1 2011 onwards. This is most likely due to the 11-Feb-2011 announcement of moving away from Symbian, which reduced the demand for Symbian smartphones overnight. As Nokia says...
"Following the announcement of our strategic partnership with Microsoft in February 2011, our strategy included the expectation to sell approximately 150 million more Symbian devices in the years to come. However, changing market conditions are putting increased pressure on Symbian. In certain markets, there has been an acceleration of the anticipated trend towards lower-priced smartphones with specifications that are different from Symbians traditional strengths, which has contributed to a faster decline of our Symbian volumes than we anticipated."
While the revenue is increasing sequentially (i.e. increasing from Q3 2011 to Q4 2011) it falls short of what Nokia was selling in 2010, and even in 2009. This is probably quite serious for the company... it’s performing worse than it was 2 years back.