Nokia’s credit story and its order book moved in the same direction on Wednesday, with Moody’s lifting the Finnish vendor’s long-term issuer rating to Baa3 from Ba1 and US cable operator Hotwire Communications naming the company to build a next-generation network in North Carolina.
The rating agency also raised the grade on Nokia’s senior unsecured debt, according to media reports, and kept a positive outlook in place. Moody’s pointed to demand for cloud and AI infrastructure as the rationale. Shares of Nokia rose 3.3% to €6.99 on the day.
The Hotwire win, announced Wednesday, covers a network designed to be ready for AI workloads. Nokia said the build is expected to go live in early 2027, meaning the project sits in the pipeline rather than in current revenue.
Traffic Forecast Points to an AI-Heavy Decade
Nokia used the same day to publish its Global Network Traffic Report, which projects that artificial intelligence will account for 44% of global network traffic by 2035. Total data volumes are expected to reach almost 3,789 exabytes per month by then, according to the company’s forecast.
The report and the Hotwire contract address different horizons: one sketches Nokia’s view of long-term global traffic growth, the other a specific US network build with a 2027 start date.
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Third-Quarter Growth Meets a Cash Flow Reset
The upgrade lands against a mixed set of recent numbers. In its quarterly report roughly two weeks ago, Nokia posted third-quarter 2026 net sales of €5.154 billion, up 10% from the year-earlier period, with comparable operating profit of €605 million.
The same release trimmed the company’s outlook for free cash flow conversion in 2026 to a range of 35% to 55%, down from a prior forecast of 55% to 75%.
Jefferies Flags Data Center Spending — and a Rival
Analysts at Jefferies, meanwhile, focused on the capital expenditure plans of major cloud providers in cloud infrastructure and data centers. The brokerage also identified Marvell as a competitor in some areas of Nokia’s business, pairing its read on the investment outlook with a note of caution on competition in parts of the portfolio.
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