In signs of growing confidence of market in Nokia, Avian Securities and Swedbank has upgraded the Nokia stock to “Buy”. Swedbank upgrades Nokia from Neutral to Buy, with a price target of €3.
Swedbank notes that Nokia has a net cash position of €1.10 per share and that the position is unlikely to see further erosion. The firm also said Nokia carries low financial risk. Break-up of Nokia is now a low-possibility as its balance sheet is no longer an issue, Swedbank noted. Given recent activity in the shares, Swedbank thinks Nokia shares are now “too cheap,” prompting the upgrade.
Avian Securities has also upgraded Nokia from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note issued on Wednesday.
In an article from ValueWalk, ABG Sundal Collier has done a closer study of the company’s balance sheets and placed valuations on each of Nokia divisions.
The analysts valued Nokia Siemens Networks at around $8.5 billion and NAVTEQ at around $4.5 billion. That leaves the company’s Devices and Services unit valued at around negative $1 billion. The analysts broke down Nokia’s Devices and Services unit further to get at the real meaning behind the numbers. They put a value of approximately $5 billion on the company’s patent portfolio and almost $4 billion on its feature phones division. They also assigned a value of approximately $2.6 billion to Nokia’s smartphones division and point out that “the investment community” seems to believe that the company’s smartphones division actually subtracts about $10 billion from Nokia’s valuation.
They further note that with these numbers, Nokia’s stock price would have to more than double to meet its real potential market capitalization.
