In general, we are not a big fan of the telecom equipment business for their commoditized products and lack of pricing power, despite all the 5G hypes around Ericsson, Nokia, and ZTE, etc. Don't get us wrong, they are important for the deployment of 5G services. They just have a hard time generating value for investors, in our opinions. Among the few players remaining in the field, Nokia is the one we like the least.

Hence we are not surprised by the stepping down of Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri. Mr. Suri will leave his post on August 31st, 2020 after a 25-year career at the company. During his tenure, Suri was instrumental in

• Turnaround of Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN)

• Ramping up Technologies business (578mn EUR sales in 2014 to 1.5bn EUR sales in 2019 with significant margin expansion)

• Acquisition of Motorola Networks to gain access to NA and Japan Markets

However, stumble on 5G products is too big a mistake to ignore. We believe this is the right thing for the board to do. We can feel the urgency from the company as they are trying to revamp their efforts in 5G:

• Secured 5G chip partnerships with Intel and Marvell, aiming to improve Nokia's ReefShark family of chipsets powering its radio access products.Link

• Drew $561mn loan for 5G R&D. Link 

Let's see if Nokia can pull it off.