The Finnish network equipment maker has been steadily repositioning itself from a traditional telecom supplier into a core player in artificial-intelligence infrastructure, and two new contracts announced within days of each other underscore the breadth of that ambition. While some investors remain skittish after a steep monthly sell-off, the company’s deal flow suggests momentum is building ahead of its second‑quarter earnings report on July 23.
Orange Belgium has named Nokia as the sole supplier for a multi‑year overhaul of its transport network across the country, merging fixed‑line and mobile traffic onto a single optical backbone. The project is designed to cope with surging bandwidth demand driven by machine learning, remote work, video streaming, gaming and cloud services. For Nokia, it marks the first deployment of its powerful 1830 Photonic Service Switch platform at an Orange subsidiary, with the AI‑powered WaveSuite software handling automation to improve resilience, simplify operations and accelerate service delivery. The upgraded network will support speeds from 1G to more than 400G.
On the other side of the world, Nokia has teamed up with infrastructure firm Comin Asia to build new AI data centers in Southeast Asia, starting in Cambodia and Laos. Nokia is supplying the high‑performance networking technology while Comin Asia handles local construction. The choice of locations reflects a pragmatic logic: Cambodia offers a quickly accessible market, while Laos boasts surplus electricity capacity that could turn the country into a regional hub for compute‑intensive workloads. The partnership adds to a list of earlier alliances with Amazon Web Services and Databricks, and Nokia has also been ramping up production of optical chips for AI networks at its U.S. facilities.
Stock bounces from near‑term lows, but volatility remains high
The Orange Belgium deal helped lift Nokia’s shares by 4.29% on Friday to €11.05, recovering some ground after a brutal stretch. The stock had dropped to €10.60 on Thursday and lost more than 26% over the prior month, as the euphoria from a stunning 90% year‑to‑date gain gave way to profit‑taking. The current price still sits about a quarter below the June record of €14.97, though it remains well above the 200‑day moving average of €7.52 and the 52‑week low of €3.49 recorded last August. The 50‑day moving average at €12.00 provides a near‑term resistance level, and annualized volatility of around 72% underscores the stock’s sharp swings. A relative‑strength index of 37.8 points to technical weakness.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Nokia?
Analysts, however, are looking past the short‑term noise. Bank of America reiterated a buy rating on Friday and raised its price target, citing expectations of strong AI‑related order inflows that Nokia is likely to report alongside its second‑quarter results. The investment bank forecasts that hardware orders in the AI segment will at least match the first quarter’s €1 billion, driven by data‑center switches and optical transport components. Jefferies also lifted its price target earlier in the week, arguing that Nokia is evolving from a classical telecom gear maker into a pivotal player in the AI infrastructure ecosystem.
Growth forecasts revised sharply higher
The numbers support that bullish narrative. In the first quarter of 2026, Nokia’s revenue from AI and cloud climbed 49% year‑on‑year, and order intake of €1 billion pointed to sustained customer demand. The company has since raised its own market forecast, now expecting the addressable AI and cloud market to expand at an annual rate of 27% between 2025 and 2028, up from a previous estimate of 16%. Optical networks remain the fastest‑growing infrastructure segment, fired by the build‑out of AI clusters at major cloud providers.
All eyes are now on the July 23 earnings release. If Nokia can show that the positive trend in AI orders continued through the second quarter—backed by concrete deals like the Orange Belgium and Comin Asia contracts—the shares may regain the momentum that carried them to a 14‑handle in June. For now, the market is demanding proof that the valuation, stretched after a nearly 90% year‑to‑date run, is justified by fundamentals.
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