Nokia's Seven-Day Rally Caps a Week of Reclassification as AI Infrastructure Play

Nokia's seven-day winning streak and analyst upgrades signal a shift from legacy telecom to AI infrastructure, with stock nearly doubling year-to-date.

The Finnish network equipment maker has strung together seven consecutive winning sessions, a run that has reshaped its market identity. Nokia is no longer being judged as a legacy telecom supplier — the analyst community has decisively recast it as an artificial intelligence infrastructure name.

The stock closed Friday at €10.95 in Helsinki, up 2.82% on the day, while its New York-listed shares finished at $13.29, gaining nearly 3%. Over the past fortnight, the equity has surged roughly 29%, and on a year-to-date basis it has nearly doubled — a level not seen in about 16 years.

The Catalyst Behind the Climb

What lit the fuse was a combination of strategic moves and a flood of analyst upgrades. Nokia announced the sale of its fixed wireless access customer premises equipment business to 5G specialist Inseego, a transaction that strips out a hardware-heavy division while keeping the company plugged into the FWA growth market. Under the deal, Nokia will receive roughly 11% of Inseego's equity through shares and warrants, and is also investing $10 million to smooth the transition. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026.

But the bigger story was the deluge of bullish calls from seven investment houses inside a single week. CFRA upgraded Nokia to "Buy" with a $16 price target, explicitly valuing the company against optical networking peers rather than traditional telecom equipment makers. JPMorgan doubled its target to €12 while maintaining "Overweight," and Morgan Stanley lifted its goal from €8.50 to €11. Argus Research also went to "Buy" with a $15 target, citing rising demand from AI data center buildouts.

Barclays remains the lone holdout, sticking with "Underweight" and a €8 target — though it did raise that from €5.20.

The Numbers That Changed the Narrative

The re-rating was anchored by first-quarter results released on April 23. Comparable operating profit jumped 54% to €281 million, comfortably ahead of the roughly €250 million analysts had penciled in. Nokia responded by raising its growth forecast for the network infrastructure division to 12-14%, and projected that optical networks and IP networking would together expand by 18-20% in 2026.

Perhaps most striking was the revision to Nokia's market outlook for AI and cloud infrastructure. The company now expects annual growth of 27% through 2028 — up sharply from the 16% it had forecast just five months ago.

The integration of fiber-optic specialist Infinera is also running ahead of schedule, with synergies already visible in the quarterly numbers. A second production facility in San Jose is slated to come online later this year.

Technical Signals Flash Caution

The rally has pushed the relative strength index to 78 on the New York listing and 72.8 in Helsinki — both firmly in overbought territory. Trading volumes have regularly exceeded twice the daily average this week, signaling elevated attention but also heightened risk.

Short interest climbed roughly 24% in April to about 68 million shares, suggesting a sizable contingent of bears betting against the stock. SEB Equities and Grupo Santander have both downgraded Nokia recently, pointing to softening demand in the legacy 5G equipment business.

On the charts, the stock has established a support zone around $12.48. After a seven-day winning streak, a period of consolidation would be historically unremarkable.

What Comes Next

Management says it is tracking above the midpoint of its full-year operating profit guidance. A share buyback program is underway to offset dilution, and Nokia will pay a dividend of €0.04 per share on May 7.

For the second quarter, the company expects sequential revenue growth of 5-9%. Those results are due in July 2026 and will provide the first real test of whether the market's new AI-infrastructure valuation is grounded in fundamentals or has run ahead of reality.