Tuesday, July 19 may prove to be a day of reckoning for Ericsson (ERIC) CEO Hans Vestberg.
Battling to lift sales, the CEO faces a litany of operational challenges and analysts aren't expecting any upturn when the company reports second-quarter results.
The Bloomberg consensus is that Ericsson, whose sales have declined for six consecutive quarters when stripping out currency benefits, will report second-quarter revenue of 58.2 billion Swedish kronor ($6.7 billion).
That compares with Skr52.2 billion in the first quarter, but is down Skr60.7 billion on the second quarter of 2015. The consensus for earnings per share is Skr0.96, compared with Skr1.04 in the second quarter of 2015.
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69.2% of analysts recorded as covering the stock on Bloomberg rate the stock as a hold, while 15.4% say sell and 15.4% say buy. The shares have fallen by more than 17% so far in 2016.
The company arrived last at the restructuring party when it announced a reorganization plan in April, with the hope of addressing its cumbersome internal structure by dividing the company into five smaller business units and cutting costs. Since this time it has signed at least two partnership agreements, one with Cisco Systems (CSCO) , and another with TeliaSonera, both of which are designed to build up its position in 5G, Internet of Things and Cloud infrastructure and services.
However, the restructuring is yet to yield any visible results and additional restructuring charges have offset the benefits anticipated from Ericsson's attempts to cut costs from the business. Some believe that the company has not done enough, even after Svenska Dagbladet reported in mid-June that it could be on the verge of cutting 25,000 more jobs.