Nokia Bears Retreat After a Brutal Earnings Day

Nokia Oyj enters the post-earnings period with short sellers pulling back sharply, even as the stock's worst single-day move in years left a visible scar on the chart.

The pivot in positioning is the most striking feature of this week's data. The earnings preview published here on October 19 flagged a fast-building short position ahead of the Q3 print. That build has now reversed. Borrow availability has surged to 1,754%, up 80% in a week alone, and well above the 52-week trough of 639% hit in late September. The cost to borrow, which had risen ahead of results, has eased back to 3.13%, down nearly 3% on the week. The ORTEX short score has drifted to 35, near the bottom of its recent range, suggesting the short thesis is losing urgency rather than gaining it. Taken together, the borrow market says bears are covering, not adding.

What triggered that rethink was painful. Nokia reported Q3 on October 22 and the stock fell 10.5% on the day, its sharpest single-session drop in recent memory. The result itself was weak: Nokia swung to a net loss of EUR 287 million, hit by EUR 180 million in restructuring charges and weak enterprise software revenue. The operating margin fell to negative 8.3%. Management cut full-year guidance, citing softer North American demand and delayed customer deployments. The stock is now down 12% over the past month, closing at EUR 8.04 on October 27, with a 3.5% bounce on the most recent session suggesting some stabilisation after the initial shock.

The broader positioning picture is not obviously bearish from here. Nokia was admitted to the EURO STOXX 50 in September, with index trackers estimated to have bought around $1.6 billion worth of shares on the September 18 trade date. That mechanical buying has now settled, and the index-driven support is in the past. What remains is a more ordinary ownership base. FMR (Fidelity) holds 7.7% and filed a 13G/A in August showing a trim from 6.2% to 5.2% of class, a passive reduction rather than an activist move. BlackRock added over 30 million shares in the quarter to September, bringing its stake to 4.7%. Norges Bank Investment Management added nearly 29 million shares over the same period. The big passive names are building, not selling, which sits oddly against the weak earnings narrative. Insider activity from October 15 consisted entirely of unpriced grants to senior managers, not open-market conviction buys, so that offers no signal.

On valuation, the forward PE has contracted to around 19.6x, down more than 3 points over the past month, while price-to-book has also compressed, falling 0.19 points to 2.0x. EV/EBITDA is edging higher at 11.4x, up modestly on the week. The factor score that stands out is the 12-month forward EPS growth rank at the 93rd percentile, which suggests the Street still models a meaningful earnings recovery from here, even after the guidance cut. EPS surprise, by contrast, scores in the 17th percentile, a reminder that Nokia has been consistently missing near-term expectations. The dividend score ranks in the 95th percentile relative to the broader universe, though the actual yield is thin: the most recent dividend was EUR 0.04, announced in February 2026. Analyst data in the system is too stale to be cited.

Close peers had a better week. LITE gained 5.3% and CRNT rose 11%, while Nokia slipped 1.2%. VIAV and HLIT also fell, so the underperformance is not universal across the group, but Nokia's earnings overhang gave it a specific drag that peers without a fresh profit warning did not share.

The next earnings event is not until January 28, 2027. Between now and then, the question is whether the short base continues to unwind as post-earnings positioning normalises, or whether the guidance cut draws fresh selling interest as investors reassess the recovery timeline.