Nokia has sold its enterprise campus edge (ECE) business, which serves the private networks market, to private equity firm Aurelius, in the second divestment of the four underperforming units its CEO Justin Hotard put up for sale last November. The deal leaves Nokia's site implementation and microwave radio businesses without a buyer nearly a year after the Finnish vendor grouped them into a "portfolio businesses" division with combined annual revenues of about €900 million ($1 billion) and collective losses of €100 million ($112 million).

Neither Nokia nor Aurelius disclosed the financial terms. Aurelius said ECE generates annual sales of more than €170 million ($190 million) and employs about 1,000 people, which works out to revenues per employee of roughly €170,000 ($190,275) — compared with about €255,000 ($285,410) for Nokia as a whole.

The sale follows April's disposal of the fixed wireless access customer premises equipment (FWA CPE) unit to San Diego-based Inseego. That deal initially gave Nokia a 7% stake in Inseego worth $10 million; after investing another $10 million at closing, Nokia was due to hold 11%.

What do the latest figures show?

Nokia's reclassification of ECE into "discontinued operations" in its second-quarter report hinted that a buyer had been found. The numbers behind the move point to deteriorating performance. Combined first-half revenues for ECE and FWA CPE fell about a third year-over-year, to €131 million ($147 million), while net losses rose 70%, to €39 million ($44 million).

The two remaining portfolio businesses — site implementation and microwave radio — account for nearly €200 million ($224 million) in first-half revenues. Sales there grew 15% year-over-year, and the unit recorded a first-half operating profit of €2 million ($2.2 million), a swing from the €17 million ($19 million) loss a year earlier.

Discontinued operations and portfolio businesses together contributed only 3.5% of Nokia's first-half group sales, but offloading them would have lifted comparable operating profit by roughly 5%.

Why do unsold units worry customers?

Buyers may refurbish a property before sale, but customers still fear being stranded with a less creditworthy supplier in a capital-intensive industry. Ericsson's own history illustrates the risk. "We came from a spot in 2017 when this was a topic in every customer interaction," said Börje Ekholm, its former CEO, last year. "Every customer I met was focusing on if Ericsson is going to stay alive etc."

Analysts also questioned why Nokia abandoned private networks, a market once promoted as a growth opportunity. Nokia evidently struggled to develop and commercialize a computing platform called MXIE, according to Pablo Tomasi, a principal analyst for future wireless at Omdia. Executives reportedly worried about head-to-head competition with some of Nokia's own customers.

The Aurelius deal should give customers "some measure of predictability, although a PE firm will likely want an exit itself at some point," noted Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis, in a LinkedIn post. On Nokia's AI-RAN partnership with Nvidia, he added that the ECE sale is "not exactly a ringing endorsement of industrial edge compute, GPUs or overhyped 'physical AI' embedded in 5G networks."

How much smaller will Nokia get?

Nokia finished 2025 with 74,100 employees, excluding optical business Infinera, which employed about 3,000 people before Nokia acquired it in February. That compares with a year-average headcount of about 92,000 in 2020. Under an earlier restructuring plan, Nokia was due to shed another 4,100 jobs this year, according to Light Reading's calculations. It has since raised guidance for restructuring charges to €800 million ($895 million), from €250 million ($280 million) previously, and confirmed site closures in China. Further layoffs are under way in Europe.

The slimmed-down Nokia will concentrate on optical connectivity for AI data centers, full-fiber broadband technology, core network software for 5G and 6G, and RAN products based on Nvidia GPUs — Nvidia having become a Nokia investor. The company is retaining its mission-critical and defense private-network activities and will keep selling RAN equipment for private networks.

With two divestments done and two unresolved, Hotard's portfolio review has roughly 5% of operating profit riding on its completion. Nokia's investors will be watching for buyers of the site implementation and microwave units as restructuring costs climb toward €800 million.