Swedish mobile networks company Ericsson continued to be plagued by a global downturn in the industry, reporting a fourth-quarter net loss of 1.6 billion kronor ($181 million), mainly due to a decline in broadband investments and licensing revenues.
The Stockholm-based company said Thursday it fell to a loss from a net profit of 7 billion kronor in the same period in 2015, as sales dropped 11 percent to 65 billion kronor.
It was the second consecutive poor quarterly result for the company.
"The negative industry trends remained in the fourth quarter," CEO Borje Ekholm said.
While the earnings report was gloomy reading, the Ericsson share price rose at the opening of the Stockholm stock market.
Investors were buoyed by new chief executive Borje Ekholm's goal of "prioritising profitability over growth."
At 0830 GMT, the share price was up 5.68 percent in a market up by 0.75 percent, but had within an hour lost more than half that ground. The higher share price did little however to make up for the 35 percent the stock lost in 2016.
The company's networks business has encountered strong headwinds, both in the markets of the future such as South America, the Middle East and Africa, which are experiencing difficult economic times, as well as in Europe and North America, which have reached saturation point.
Ericsson plans to continue its transformation and refine its strategy to "focus investments into areas where we both can and must win", said Ekholm, who took over the company on January 16.
"This means prioritizing profitability over growth, but also to diligently continue to work on efficiency and effectiveness across all operations", he said.
The company said it was "tracking toward target" on its savings target of 9 billion kronor in 2017.
A savings plan launched by Ericsson in November 2014 aims to achieve annual operating costs of 53 billion kronor, excluding restructuring charges, by the second half of 2017.
In 2016, those costs totalled 56.4 billion.
Ericsson also announced, for the first time since 2008, that it would slash its dividend, from 3.7 kronor a year ago to one krona.
