Helsinki shares lower midday; Nokia falls in heavy volume on Ericsson warning

Helsinki shares lower midday; Nokia falls in heavy volume on Ericsson warning

	Published : Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:36 By : Agencies Print this Story

HELSINKI (Thomson Financial) - Shares were lower in late morning trade, with Nokia weaker -- but off opening lows -- following a profit-warning by Ericsson, the world's biggest telecoms infrastructure group and a rival to Nokia's Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) venture.

At 11.26 pm, the OMX Helsinki 25 index was down 1.13 pct at 3,203.29 and the OMX Helsinki down 1.30 pct at 11,846.90. Volume was a heavy 797 mln eur, of which 637 mln eur was in Nokia stock.

Nokia was down 2.07 pct at 25.10 eur. Ericsson slashed its third and fourth quarter earnings and margins guidance due to a shortfall in revenues from mobile networks. The announcement saw Ericsson lose more than a quarter of its market value in Stockholm trade, but analysts insisted it was not a big deal for Nokia.

'This is not a huge issue as Nokia Siemens Networks is already expected to post a loss, including one-off charges which should affect both parent companies (Nokia and Siemens),' said a London-based trader.

Janne Rantanen, analyst at Carnegie in Helsinki, said: 'We all know that NSN has been struggling, Nokia has been admitting that for quite some time already.'

'It's mainly about Ericsson, which had been keeping up hopes that it would be unaffected by the market competition. But now it seems that the number one is hurt.'

Nokia fell in the two previous sessions, dented by broader equity selling and nervousness ahead of the handset maker's third-quarter results due out Thursday.

The rest of the leaderboard was mostly in the red, with TietoEnator -- down 3.98 pct at 16.17 eur -- and Cargotec --down 3.34 pct at 34.70 eur -- among the biggest fallers.

Elisa fell 5.62 pct to 21.16 eur, but was trading ex-dividend for 1 eur a share.

Forestry stocks were little changed after sharp falls yesterday on the back of UPM-Kymmene's profit-warning yesterday. UPM-Kymmene was down 0.14 pct at 14.38 eur and Stora Enso down 0.09 pct at 11.69 eur.

Utility Fortum was up 0.93 pct at 27.19 eur.

james.etheridge@thomson.com

je/lam

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