Nokia Reports $755 Million Loss In Q3 2012

Nokia continues to bleed through its cash reserves, reporting a $755 million third quarter loss. You may recall that Nokia lost $1 billion in Q1 2012 followed by $775 million in Q2 2012. The most recent quarterly loss comes about despite the company’s earnings of $9.4 billion in revenues.

In what might be the most obvious statement of the year, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop called Q3 “a difficult quarter” for the company’s Device and Services division. Elop did note however that the company’s operating margin improved quarter-on-quarter to negative 7.4 percent. Nokia has been working on its operating margins through an aggressive restructuring plan that has included shutting down all of its Finnish production plants while firing thousands of workers.

The handset manufacturer also announced that Lumia sales for the quarter totaled 2.9 million units, a number they expect to rapidly increase when the Lumia 920 arrives to market with Windows Phone 8.

Overall Mobile sales for Nokia increased to 77 million units of which 6.5 million are attributed to strong sales for the company’s Nokia Asha smartphone line.

Nokia currently holds $3.6 billion in cash, down from $5.5 billion last quarter and far lower than the $6.64 billion cash on hand it held at the same time last year. Five years ago, Nokia had $11 billion cash on hand.

The tech firm has fallen on such dire times that it has considered selling its Espoo, Finland world headquarters for somewhere in the range of $260 million to $390 million.

Nokia has also been in talks with Ericsson to sell its business support systems for $377 million, although where those talks current sit is not known at this time.

Nokia is set to cut 17,000 jobs with the potential for more to follow.