Great. It looks like we can start. I'm Alex Duvall from Goldman Sachs. I'm delighted to be here today with Justin Hotard, CEO of Nokia. I'd like to state this conversation is not intended for the media and is off the record. Great. Justin, thank you so much for being with us.
Thanks for having me, Alex. Great to be here.
Super. Maybe just to start, I thought we could kick off with your biggest learnings, following over 100 days as CEO. I wondered if there are any aspects of the business that surprised you versus your expectations coming in, and then we can go into some detailed questions.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think a couple of things, and you've seen us make, I've made a few changes coming in. First of all, I think, you know, one, pleasantly surprised with the amount of technology we have and then the depth of customer relationships we have, particularly in our core market and in communications service providers. I think, you know, very positive conversations with customers. One of the key things, you know, feedback from customers was they see us as one company. They want to engage with us in a consistent manner. We were not organized in a manner that was supporting that. We made some changes structurally to make sure for those accounts that work with us, whether they buy from us or they buy and partner from us, depending on who the customer is, that we're engaging with them in a consistent manner.
That's why we made the change on that side. I think just obviously spending time with employees, really, really energized by the employee base, and particularly at core engineers, our teams in the field, obviously, supply chain operations teams, some great work going on. Their feedback was, you know, look, we're more complex. We're very complex to operate internally. That's why we made some of the steps that we made around functional excellence and just simplifying how we work. I think all of that is a positive on early steps. I'm optimistic about the opportunity we have. The last thing I'll touch on is Infinera.
I'm optimistic about the opportunity we have in optical because this is a space where bringing in Infinera not only brought in great technology and manufacturing with the indium phosphide fabrication that we have, but also brought in a deeper understanding of AI and cloud customers. Nokia had some footprint in that space as well, particularly on IP routing and switching. I would say Infinera brought a much deeper focus in that. Obviously, as Federico retired and David Mulholland was coming in from Infinera, it was the opportunity I saw to spread that capability across Network Infrastructure and really increase our exposure and footprint in that space. As we said in Q2, now 5% of our revenue in Q2 was in AI and cloud across the whole company, largely on the back of momentum in optical.
Super helpful. Maybe just double-clicking on the point about AI, I guess service providers, broadly speaking, remain relatively cautious. We've heard how hyperscalers continue to step up investment. I wondered if you could talk to how you expect demand to evolve across your various customer segments in the coming year. Obviously, as mix shifts towards hyperscalers and that AI piece driven by optical, for example, what implications does that have on Nokia's profitability?
Yeah, I think first of all, there's no question that the AI build-out is happening in the data center today. When we talk about the data center, it's not just the data center, it's also transport networks. You see that, obviously, I think in the U.S., it's more acute because you see it across the size and scale of the data center builds driving the size and scale of some of the metro network investments, but also some of the subsea investments for connectivity. You're seeing that through the hyperscalers driving a lot of that investment in particular. We believe that over time, that's going to be a broader tailwind that will shift into Europe. Obviously, there was big news with the announcement with Nimbus this week. I think those are all favorable in terms of market signals for continued investment in data center.
We've been actively involved, at least with some of the work on the AI gigafactories in Europe as well. We see longer-term tailwinds there. How the market plays out in terms of the specifics of investment, I think I'm less concerned on. What I'm focused on right now is making sure we're competitive across all elements of the opportunity in AI and fixed infrastructure across the optical network space. In IP routing and switching, if you look at that market for us, that's a space where in IP routing, we've seen Nokia, pre-Infinera, Nokia had a good footprint in that space, largely on the back of these data center networks needing front-end routing. That was a favorable trend. We were participating opportunistically, I would say, in IP switching, but most of our IP switching business has largely been in communications service providers.
When I look at the rest of the business, I think one is certainly good fixed networks, part of the core Network Infrastructure business. We're seeing investment in passive optical upgrades, fiber to home. I think obviously you saw good news coming out of the U.S. with the One Big Beautiful Bill and some of the investment incentives around that. I think that's favorable for us in terms of growth. We're a market leader in that space. We're also seeing upgrade cycles, upgrade cycles driven in most of the established economies around the world. We think there's opportunity in emerging economies as well. I think there's a lot of growth perspective on that. I don't think that's necessarily AI-driven, but I think it's AI additive. I think longer term, you know, mobile network switches in a digestion period or flat period right now, largely because data has saturated from devices.
What we do see is that there will be future applications and services, whether it's autonomous vehicles, which is starting to get more traction in the market, but still very low level of penetration, to robotics, to AR, VR. There's a set of applications that will drive demand for those markets. As I've said before, I still believe we're fundamentally at the beginning of an AI supercycle. I think we're seeing investment in data center today. It's always at the start from an infrastructure build perspective. I think this will tail out over decades to come. That's not just going to be around what we see today in data centers, but probably the broader adoption of quantum acceleration as another way to get power efficient consumption. I think there's a set of tailwinds for us in markets.
What we've got to be disciplined on is investing where there's growth and then being disciplined on managing cash flow and profitability in markets that are more mature today while still investing in the core technology that gives us the opportunity to capture the future growth we anticipate in those markets.
Very good. You mentioned Europe and U.S. I wondered if we could look at the geographical picture, as it were. I wondered where you're seeing the strongest growth opportunities and, conversely, which are the regions where perhaps there are greater challenges, perhaps in terms of idiosyncratic factors or macro. Perhaps related to that, there's talk of sovereign AI in various regions. I'd be interested in where that might also present opportunities.
Yeah, so I think first of all, you know, U.S., North America, but largely U.S.-driven is the biggest one. It's our biggest market. Two, it's the biggest growth market because of the AI investments happening here. I think what, you know, as you look at this, what we're starting to now see is that market shift. There is investment in local cloud instances, somewhat on training, but I think that will continue. Of course, I think as we expect, inferencing will continue to be a growth factor for us. Someone else is going to add a comment. On that front, I think we'll see, you know, we'll continue to see growth across the market. What is clear in the short term is that the big U.S. hyperscalers, the big model training houses are driving most of that demand, and so they're driving and shaping a lot of that demand.
I think the question you're rightfully asking, which is something that we're obviously watching and ensuring we're positioned for, is how does that federate out? Who are going to be the winners as AI globalizes and we see sovereign investments, both by governments, but also by private sector companies? One of the things we've done obviously in Europe, in our home country in Finland, is participated in the AI gigafactory bid. That was a learning opportunity for us to participate and grow. I think as the only sovereign player of fixed network infrastructure in Europe, we think we've got a good opportunity there. It's not just in Europe. It's obviously across Asia. The Middle East is obviously a huge investment opportunity in terms of the capital being deployed for data centers there, and we think there's a lot of growth opportunity for us.
The focus for me is really around making sure we're investing in the key areas where we've got differentiating technology to capitalize on that growth, both near-term and longer term, and then, of course, making sure we've got the right go-to-market motions and coverage against that.
Very helpful. I think you touched earlier on this topic of fiber build-outs. Specifically in the U.S., large telcos are expanding their fiber programs. Just curious how you'd think about the opportunity there. How should we dimension it, and how should we think about the sort of timeline of that benefiting?
Yeah, so I think two things that are favorable for us. You know, we're a market leader in this space today. Two things that we focus on. One is the build-out of passive optical networks in terms of the operator line terminal, and then of the termination point, the PON termination point at the client side. If you look at our portfolio today, that's the majority of our business. We also have products that cover customer premise equipment. We've got products in FWA as well, fixed wireless access. Those are areas that also we get value from our existing customer base. I would say the bigger opportunity for us in terms of growth and value capture is in that core business. The U.S.
is absolutely the biggest opportunity, but we also see opportunities for upgrade cycles and expansion, particularly in Europe, in some of the emerging economies, and also some of the other established economies around the world. I think the tailwind that we'll continue to see on fiber is positive. Obviously, as the market share leader, the key thing for us is to continue to hold share and participate in that growth.
Super helpful. I wondered if we could delve into this AI topic in a bit more detail and how that sort of dovetails with your portfolio. Clearly, it sounds like you see these emerging opportunities in optical routing, switching, intra-data center. I wondered if you could just expand a little bit on how you see the opportunity there.
Yeah, so first is obviously AI is a driver of incremental infrastructure product demand, largely on data centers today. What I think about are sort of three tiers there. I touched on this a little bit earlier, but subsea is one that's a significant opportunity. Obviously, intra-data center connectivity and then moving into the data center with plugables, with our ISD products. The key thing for us is really focused on some of the places where we've got differentiation in terms of the terminals, the subsystems, but also all the way down into the components and some of the things that Infinera was additive to our portfolio in terms of bringing additional DSP capability, but more importantly, also the photonic integrated circuits. That was a key area of advantage for us.
As you think about AI as a demand driver, we talked about some of the potential future use cases in mobile. Again, let's think about that as one case. The second thing is us using AI to improve automation. We're working with customers today. We've got examples of that with our manta ray sawing on the mobile side. We're doing work with our system management operations on core networks, and then even with some of the tools that we have on systems management on the network infrastructure side. Providing AI is a way to improve productivity and also improve services. This is also, if you think about a little bit of the vision on mobile for a minute on core networks, you talk about applications like network slicing. It doesn't get as compelling.
It's great to do one network slice and have a carve-out, but it doesn't get as compelling until you can actually have something that's truly more around intent-based networking where every device gets a certain level of quality and service. That could be because I'm a subscriber that wants certain quality. We see, for example, Elisa, who's our main operator in Finland, has tiered pricing and tiered services. That's one of the things that you can differentiate on speed. That's one way to deliver service. Another is assurance, right? Ensuring that I get the quality of service and the connectivity. You think about, again, that could be through a plan. It could also be through a service. If I'm a robot that's providing first responder services in the future, you want to make sure that network slice is both dynamic and provides assurance.
I can't just keep that network slice open. I can also do network optimization and configuration. There are events that happen. There are real-time events that are happening. There could be a traffic accident or something like that. How do I optimize the network in real time and provide that performance? Maybe that's preserving the performance for the people that are on my fixed wireless access nodes, as well as the people on the ground. There is a set of things like that with AI that we think will be better. The last thing is really AI in the product, right? Today we use AI actually quite a bit. It's built in particularly on the radio, on our core radio side, but it's more traditional AI, more classical AI. Obviously, we announced a year and a half ago the partnership with NVIDIA around an AI initiative for AI RAN.
T-Mobile US is a participant, SoftBank, others. We think there's real potential for AI in the products as well as a way to deliver better service, better performance, greater power efficiency, but also accelerate how we deploy and deliver services. That should create new monetization opportunities, which is why, if you go all the way back to where we are in the core, we're starting to do more around open APIs. We believe in a more open ecosystem. Whether it's open APIs and the interoperability that we're providing with some of the Open RAN services that we're building, we see this capability as longer term in networks as being a way to allow AI to be integrated in various ways in the products.
To follow up on Open RAN, would the notion be that you could actually use this kind of automated and self-organizing network to be a lot more efficient and perhaps overcome some of the capacity issues related to Open RAN and some of the costs involved in it?
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think how efficient with how we allocate spectrum within sites, efficient with how we interoperate. Obviously, with Open RAN, which is, I think it's a great vision, seeing it into product over time, is also the ability to allow best of breed. I think that's always favorable for, you know, open for me, and standards are always a favorable platform because you allow everybody to interoperate, and then you compete on best of breed. I think for us, that's a compelling vision for the future.
You've talked about AI in the products and obviously how we could think about future roadmaps and so on. Just curious, AI would seem to push some of the requirements on the network closer to the edge. Just curious, sort of from a RAN perspective, what opportunities that opens up for Nokia?
Yeah, I think it's interesting that it's early in this space, but there is potential for very latency-sensitive and then certain devices that may not have the computational power to drive AI to the edge. The question is, where is that edge? Is it the far edge? Is it the near edge? I think those are still questions. That also varies a little bit on the networks. In the U.S., where you've got more balanced distribution of density versus sparsity, that may drive one answer. It could be very different in parts of Europe where you have much greater density. That'll vary a little bit depending on the networks. I think, again, that's where the flexibility and the architecture and how we're thinking about it is so important.
Brilliant. You talked earlier about the 5% of your sales roughly that's related to AI. Within that, obviously, there's a meaningful share tied to optical. I just wondered if you could go into a bit more detail as to how you assess your competitive position, you know, after more than 100 days of CEO, how you sort of benchmark and think about your positioning in things like optical interconnect, particularly given the sort of recent developments about plugable optics and things like that.
Yeah, so we talked about the 5% being AI and data center, right? That's the focus. I think about it in a couple of ways. One, I obviously think about overall market share. That's the scorecard. I think about market coverage and product. First of all, product is key, particularly in this space. We have to have left-edge technology. Obviously, if you look at it objectively, we were a bit behind. What's been good about the acquisition with Infinera and the subsequent integration and focus on the roadmap is we've made really quick roadmap decisions, which means we can then reallocate the R&D expertise that we have to getting products that are much more left-edge. I think that's been one of the positive attributes and intangibles that Infinera has brought versus the traditional Nokia team. The traditional Nokia team was probably more focused on communications service providers.
This has been a compliment in terms of what they've added. The two teams together have been fantastic on getting products to market. I think you see that with how quickly we brought 800 gig out, and we obviously didn't disclose a customer, but we announced that we had a major award that we received in Q2. I think that's been very, very positive in terms of the progress. That's where it starts. We have to be focused on product. Then it comes down to us building additional capabilities in terms of supply chain support, ability to deliver for our customers. You saw a little bit of that in our results in Q2 where we didn't maximize the opportunity we had because we had a little bit of supply chain shortage.
A little bit of that is us learning the muscle of how to respond to data center customers, which are obviously in the build-out that we're seeing and the pace and the growth that's happening requires a little bit of a different muscle than our more traditional communications service provider base that's more predictable. Our peers have also talked about this, that there are some shortages in the marketplace. That's a sign of just the excess demand and excess growth that we're seeing in the market, which is really, you know, which is obviously a positive. The third thing is just sales and market coverage, right, and making sure that we're across those opportunities. I think that's a place where David and the team are very focused and pleased with the progress we're seeing in terms of opportunities.
What I want to see us do is continue to drive sequential order and revenue growth. I think that's obviously the first metric, and then over time market share. That's the way we'll ultimately measure our success.
Super helpful. I think, Justin, in the second quarter, you know, optical demand was pretty robust. There was some commentary about it being slightly tempered by some modest supply constraints. I wondered how you see the dynamics evolving going forward and curious to what extent a supply normalization could actually unlock slightly stronger growth going forward.
Yeah, we didn't disclose what we would have seen, but I think we were optimistic we would have been into the double digits on growth in kind of at a dimensioning level. We saw very strong, very strong book to bill in that quarter. I believe we'll continue to see strong book to bill. Look, on the other side, the reality is that the tremendous growth we're seeing in the market means that we're probably going to continue to see supply pressures. That's more of an industry comment than it is us. I think what we need to do is make sure we're on top of those, we're ahead of that, we're ahead of them, we understand what's coming, and we're taking the wise risks.
The other thing I would just say is having just spent yesterday looking at the fab capacity we have on the photonic integrated circuit side, seeing the new fab being built. You think about fabs, you think about, I'll just dimension. These are not billion dollar, billion euro fabs. They're a little bit smaller than that in terms of capacity, but that creates tremendous opportunity for us in supply. Moving into this new facility, standing that up, I think gives us great opportunity to capture it in terms of our core products. Then it's pulling together that complete solution for customers.
Very helpful. I guess, you know, coming to the end of our conversation, two more questions for me. One was on photonics. I think you mentioned that earlier in this dialogue. Obviously, server densities are going up and copper cabling is reaching physical limits. It would seem like next generation photonics has some increasing option value when you think about intra-data center connectivity. Curious to get your view on the potential you see for photonic integrated circuits, how they could change the interconnect architectures, and to what extent that could open up new avenues for your product portfolio.
Yeah, look, I mean, I think we're heading down a trend as bandwidth increases. We're going to continue, and bandwidth increases and the realities of density pressures continue because there is only so much you can pack into a rack. Those pressures are going to drive a shift to more and more photonics and more and more optics. I think that's favorable for us in terms of our portfolio. Of course, certainly the work that we're doing today, I think, is a good view of what we can do. Capitalizing on that opportunity, not just external to the data center, but intra-data center, is one of the things that we're focused on as we look at investments. I think also having some flexibility in how we co-develop and co-create and the different business models we might pursue there.
I think all of that's a tailwind, including down into the server, but certainly in the rack. I think over time we'll see more and more of that connectivity move to optical.
Super helpful. I think you talked about IP routing as well as strategic priority. Obviously, it's an area where it's highly competitive. You've got established players. As you mentioned, you know, historically, you've done well in that space. I wondered if you could talk a bit more about your front-end wins. What are your plans to gain share given that sort of strong competitive element?
Yeah, look, I think we're, you know, we've been a traditional strong, you know, strong player in IP routing. IP switching, a little bit of a different story. That's a place where we've been largely focused on our core communications service provider base. I think obviously there's clear market leaders in that space that existed in cloud. We didn't really participate in the cloud market and data center AI. Some of those players are gaining traction. I think that's a bit of a longer journey for us. In IP routing, we're seeing demand on the back of, you know, obviously the AI data center builds. That's something we've capitalized on. It's supporting our growth. I think there's more we can do there. I think there's more innovation.
One of the things with David and the team that we're focused on is how do we make sure we capitalize on that opportunity. This is also where, you know, thinking a little bit differently about partnerships, co-innovation, collaboration becomes really important. Some of these things that we've talked about more broadly across the business, I think are very acute in that space where not only we can capture the existing demand, but how do we really be a partner in designing those stacks for the future so that they support where our major customers want to be able to take them and if they're continuing to evolve and invest in their, you know, in their network architectures.
Very clear. Maybe just to follow up, firstly on the switching side, I think there's obviously a plan at Nokia to invest in order to drive product innovation there. How do you assess the progress that's been made? We started this conversation talking about wireless. One of the major markets there is obviously India. Just be curious on kind of what the latest dynamics are that you see.
Yeah, I think, you know, first of all, we came out and said we were investing €100 million, you know, incremental €100 million in IP networking, which was switching and routing. We touched on that a little bit. I think for me, I mean, look, at the end of the day, I spend around €4.5 billion on R&D. That's like a little bit more than 2% of my R&D mix. I think probably from a disclosure perspective, that's well within my capacity on capital allocation. I'm optimistic on our growth prospects. What I'm really focused on is making sure we're investing in the right places where we can differentiate. I think you'll see more of that as we come to capital markets today. I had to put one plug in for it, Alex. The second thing on mobile, your question was really around India.
You know, look, India has been a market that I think there's over the long term, there's a ton of growth prospects, right? It's growing population, growing penetration of mobile, growing penetration of postpaid versus prepaid, which is all of those things are tailwind, you know, in terms of the growth. In the short term, it can be quite dynamic because you've got, you know, the market's quite healthy now in terms of having three operators that are at scale, you know, two that are, you know, two in Bharti and Jio that are very, you know, they're at larger scale, you know, Vodafone India being a VIL being a little bit, you know, a little bit behind, but pursuing that.
I think from that standpoint, we see a very healthy market, but we also recognize there's just, there's dynamics in the market that are going to create, you know, some short-term cycles. I think we're balanced on that. It appears to be a market effect. Obviously, we're going to continue to work very closely with our customers. We want to continue to innovate with them. I think, you know, the size and the scale and the potential of the market in India is one that it's going to continue to drive and shape innovation in the industry. That's something that as we think about, you know, key partners in terms of collaboration, much like we enjoy, you know, with our large customer in the U.S., we see more opportunity to do that in India. That's where I remain focused.
You know, we'll continue to be, as we need to be in mobile, very disciplined on how we manage the business for, you know, for profit and cash flow so that we can absorb some of these ups and downs in the business.
Super helpful. I think, Justin, we've come to the end of our time pretty much. I really appreciate the discussion and look forward to continuing the dialogue.
Good. Thanks so much, Alex. Great to be with you.