Business Services Industry

Ericsson reports 9-month operating profit of SEK19.5bn

Nordic Business Report, Oct 22, 2004

Swedish telecomms solutions provider Ericsson reported on Friday (22 October) an operating profit of SEK19.5bn on net sales of SEK92.5bn for the financial period January-September 2004.

Operating profit for the nine-month period improved from the loss of SEK13.6bn while net sales increased from SEK81.5bn, as compared to the corresponding period in 2003.

Operating profit for the quarter July-September 2004 amounted to SEK7.2bn on net sales of SEK31.8bn.

Carl-Henric Svanberg, CEO of Ericsson, said that during the third quarter of 2004 nine new WCDMA networks were commercially launched, reaching a total of 45.

During the quarter the number of WCDMA subscriptions increased from some 7 million to more than 10 million, while the number of CDMA2000 1xEV-DO subscriptions had reached more than 9 million.

Worldwide subscription penetration was 25% with a total of 1.6 billion subscriptions, of which more than 1.1 billion were in GSM.

According to the CEO, the global number of subscriptions could pass 2 billion during 2006 and was expected to pass 2.5 billion by 2009.

Ericsson estimated a moderate underlying market growth in 2005.

One Swedish krona (SEK) is worth approximately 0.08 British pounds (GBP).

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