Nokia's Share Slide Widens Gap With Analyst Buyside Optimism as Earnings Verdict Nears
Published on 07/08/2026 at 07:34 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
When two of the world's largest investment banks raise their price targets on a stock, a rally might be expected. Yet Nokia's shares are heading in precisely the opposite direction, closing Tuesday at €10.35 — a decline that has wiped nearly 18% off the stock in the past month alone. Over the past seven trading days, the drop has accelerated to 8.73%.
The sell-off has pushed the Finnish telecom equipment maker's share price more than 30% below its 52-week high of €14.97, reached on 3 June. It now sits 14.22% below its 50-day moving average of €12.07. The 14-day relative strength index, at 37.9, suggests the stock is not yet oversold but has clearly lost upward momentum.
Bank of America this week lifted its price target to €15.60, while Danske Bank upgraded Nokia to a Buy rating with a €14 target. Both firms cite growing confidence in the company's positioning in artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure. Danske noted that Nokia's deepening ties with major cloud providers are underpinning a structural shift in its revenue mix.
Not all analysts share the enthusiasm. UBS maintains a Hold rating, and Barclays continues to recommend selling the stock, arguing that it remains unclear whether the AI-driven transformation can offset the lingering weakness in Nokia's legacy telecom equipment business.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Nokia?
The divergence between analyst optimism and market reality has become stark. Nokia's US-listed ADRs fell 2.8% in a single session during which most European ADRs gained, a relative weakness that traders attribute to sector-specific headwinds rather than company fundamentals.
On the commercial front, the company has been busy striking deals. It expanded its partnership with Google Cloud, planning to integrate Gemini-based AI agents into its Assurance Center, with a SaaS launch on the Google Cloud Marketplace scheduled for September. Separately, Nokia deepened its collaboration with Amazon Web Services, aiming to make its Autonomous Networks Fabric available on AWS for Level 4 autonomy by year-end. In classical networking, Orange Belgium has selected Nokia as the sole supplier for merging its fixed and mobile transport networks into a unified optical network across the country. Management also highlights internal efficiency gains from deploying agent-based AI tools across the company, which it says have noticeably shortened network fault-resolution times.
The operational results, meanwhile, have been broadly encouraging. In the first quarter, total revenue rose 4% year-on-year. The AI and cloud segment surged 49% and now accounts for 8% of group sales, with order intake exceeding €1 billion. Network infrastructure added 6% growth. Management has reaffirmed full-year operating profit guidance of €2.0 billion to €2.5 billion, pointing to the upper half of that range. It has also raised the growth forecast for the networks division to 12–14%, with optical networks expected to grow as much as 20%.
Nokia at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.
Despite the recent pullback, the longer-term picture remains impressive. The stock is up 85.88% year-to-date and has gained 134.75% over the past twelve months — a re-rating that reflects how the market has rewarded Nokia's pivot toward an AI-native network equipment role.
The decisive test arrives on 23 July, when Nokia reports its second-quarter and first-half results. Investors will be watching closely to see whether the strong order momentum in cloud and AI has continued and whether it is sufficient to offset the drag from mobile networks. A miss could send the stock toward deeper technical support levels; a beat would validate the bullish analyst calls and reinforce the long-term trend.
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