müsste ericy heute massiv steigen........
mfg ath (Adds analyst, detail, background) STOCKHOLM, July 21 (Reuters) - Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson (Stockholm:ERICb.ST - News) reported a higher-than-expected profit for the second quarter on Wednesday as it reaps the benefits of rising demand and cost cuts, but kept its cautious outlook unchanged.
ADVERTISEMENT Ericsson, the world's biggest producer of mobile networks, made a 7.8 billion crown ($1.05 billion) pretax profit in the April-June period, beating a consensus forecast of 5.5 billion.
Sales were 32.6 billion crowns against a consensus of 30.35 billion and up from 27.61 in the same period of last year. Orders exceeded sales, boding well for future sales growth.
"Confidence has returned to the industry. 3G rollouts, GSM capacity expansions as well as EDGE upgrades creates momentum for us," Ericsson Chief Executive Carl-Henric Svanberg said.
"The traffic growth ... should generate slight to moderate growth in the global mobile systems market. In addition to this underlying growth there is an effect from operators catching up on previous years' limited investments. This effect continues but should abate over time," he said in a statement.
Ericsson has quantified the slight to moderate growth as an increase of up to 9 percent in dollar terms, an estimate which many analysts see as conservative.
Arch rival Nokia (NOK1V.HE), which last week reported a 6 percent year-on-year rise in second-quarter sales, forecast "slight growth" in euro terms for networks. Analysts estimate this would be equal to 10-11 percent growth in dollar terms.
Ericsson's gross margin, the broadest measure of how a company manages its costs in relation to sales, rose to 47.8 percent from 44.7 percent in the first quarter, against a market consensus of 44.8 percent.
Since the start of the year Ericsson shares have soared 57 percent, outperforming the DJ Stoxx technology index (Zurich:^SX8P - News) by 70 percent. Analysts have said the stock is fully valued and a strong report could be an opportunity to take profits.
Ericsson will start trading in Stockholm at 0730 GMT.
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