Weekly Reflections W6: Customer X’s Situation looks bad, no surprise

Chinese New Year (CNY) is a bit like Brazilian Carnival, the year doesn’t really start before it. Before CNY here I was trying to get engagement going with the project, but the account was busy with an offer, the support teams had their minds in the details of the offer. Now, this week, everybody gets back from CNY holidays and I have engaged with more than 40 people in 2 days. Expectations are high, including mine, and that’s where they should be.

We’ve received the first deliverable from our external partner. It paints, as it always does, a negative picture of our customer. Underperforming stocks for just too long, a trace of dislike among the investor community (as an analyst said “This is not our favourite operator”), broker’s ratings not looking good year over year, EPS forecasts do not look promising, too much cash on their balance sheet, and no clear growth story communicated by top management. Data ARPU for the whole market not expected to see substantial growth for the next 4 years when it stands at a staggering 15% of ARPU level.

Tough, huh? This will be a nice engagement. Great people, great environment, feels good!

PS: as a side note, looking very much forward to Nokia’s strategy and Financial Briefing. That was really good PR, agree? :-)

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