Nokia (NYSE:NOK) Trading Up 4% After Analyst Upgrade

Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) was up 4% during mid-day trading on Thursday after BNP Paribas upgraded the stock to an outperform rating. BNP Paribas now has a $5.00 price target on the stock. Nokia traded as high as $4.57 and last traded at $4.56. Approximately 9,608,385 shares were traded during trading, a decline of 51% from the average daily volume of 19,759,633 shares. The stock had previously closed at $4.38.

Several other research analysts also recently commented on the stock. Wall Street Zen upgraded shares of Nokia from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, May 21st. BNP Paribas Exane raised Nokia from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $5.00 price objective for the company in a research report on Wednesday. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut their price objective on Nokia from $6.50 to $6.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, July 29th. Six equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Nokia currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $5.52.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the company. Artisan Partners Limited Partnership lifted its position in Nokia by 1.8% in the second quarter. Artisan Partners Limited Partnership now owns 108,136,988 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $560,150,000 after purchasing an additional 1,957,524 shares during the period. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. lifted its position in Nokia by 8.7% in the first quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now owns 12,550,274 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $66,140,000 after purchasing an additional 1,002,033 shares during the period. Woodline Partners LP lifted its position in Nokia by 125.4% in the fourth quarter. Woodline Partners LP now owns 12,000,442 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $53,162,000 after purchasing an additional 6,677,017 shares during the period. Acadian Asset Management LLC bought a new stake in shares of Nokia in the 1st quarter valued at approximately $45,207,000. Finally, Deutsche Bank AG raised its holdings in shares of Nokia by 129.4% in the 1st quarter. Deutsche Bank AG now owns 8,572,860 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $45,179,000 after buying an additional 4,835,005 shares in the last quarter. 5.28% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Nokia Price Performance

The company has a 50-day moving average of $4.50 and a 200 day moving average of $4.92. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.12, a quick ratio of 1.21 and a current ratio of 1.46. The firm has a market cap of $24.72 billion, a P/E ratio of 22.98 and a beta of 0.90.

Nokia (NYSE:NOK) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, July 24th. The technology company reported $0.05 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.07 by ($0.02). The company had revenue of $5.34 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $4.82 billion. Nokia had a net margin of 5.30% and a return on equity of 8.36%. The business’s revenue was up 1.8% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the company earned $0.06 earnings per share. On average, sell-side analysts anticipate that Nokia Corporation will post 0.34 EPS for the current year.

Nokia Company Profile

Nokia Oyj provides mobile, fixed, and cloud network solutions worldwide. The company operates through four segments: Network Infrastructure, Mobile Networks, Cloud and Network Services, and Nokia Technologies. The company provides fixed networking solutions, such as fiber and copper-based access infrastructure, in-home Wi-Fi solutions, and cloud and virtualization services; IP networking solutions, including IP access, aggregation, and edge and core routing for residential, mobile, enterprise and cloud applications; optical networks solutions that provides optical transport networks for metro, regional, and long-haul applications, and subsea applications; and submarine networks for undersea cable transmission.