Earnings Labs

Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ) (ERIC)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, May 5, 2016

$11.40

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the Ericsson's analyst and media conference call for the first quarter's reports. To view visual aids for this call, please log onto www.ericsson.com/press or www.ericsson.com/investors. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, replay will be available one hour after today's conference call. Peter Nyquist will now open the call.

Peter Nyquist

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Okay. Thank you, operator, and hello, and welcome to this Q1 call. With me here today, I have our CEO and President, Hans Vestberg, our Chief Financial Officers, Jan Frykhammar, and our Head of Marketing and Communication, Helena Norrman. During the call today, we will make forward-looking statements. These statements are based on our current expectations and certain planning assumptions. They are all subject to risks and uncertainties. The actual result may differ material due to factors mentioned in today's press release, and discussed in this conference call. We encourage you to read about these risks and uncertainties in our earnings report, as well as in our annual report. With that said, I would like to hand it over to Mr. Hans Vestberg for the first part.

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Thank you, Peter. Okay. So let's take a quick look at the key developments in the quarter. We can only say that the momentum and the discussion on 5G, IoT and cloud from Barcelona has continued. It's the main topics of our discussions. The other is, of course, the digital transformation of our customers. Everything from preparing the virtualization for 5G, or preparing the OSS, BSS for a more customer centric way of working. That's clearly where we see our customer moving, and they are moving pretty fast. They are arising both opportunities and challenges. We're seeing the same markets having a weak macroeconomic environment this quarter. It's just that they haven't been in there for quite a while right now. And both the currency fluctuations and the macroeconomic environment in these countries, of course, after awhile it becomes hard for our customers to invest, and where are markets like Brazil, Russia, Portugal, Middle East where we have now had this challenge for quite a while. And that remains, even though they are going from 3G to 4G demand in these markets, it is a more challenging environment there. We have less coverage product in Europe. One of the larger operators Europe have finished the big rollout of 4G. So that, of course has coming to a halt. And you can see it in from our figures as well, that we have a decline in our European business. If you look at our sales, we continue with the same statement we had in three the third quarter and in the fourth quarter, that North America, our normal broadband is having a stable business for us. We had the good progress on IPRs in the quarter. We had a little bit mix in our gross margin, where we had a challenging…

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Okay. Thank you, Hans. We -- I will start with an update on the cost savings. Then the general message is absolutely in line with what Hans just mentioned. We have the cost and efficiency program, meaning the net SEK9 billion savings program, that where we feel confident that we will be able to deliver those during 2017. We also said in the Q4 report in January, that we are going to spend more time and effort on the cost of saves parts, which we are doing, and we continue to do. On the operating expense side then, SEK14.2 billion operating expense in Q1 compared to SEK15.6 billion a year ago. That's a significant decrease. Not all of it is related to the efficiency program -- I need to be clear on that. There are three items explaining the reductions year-over-year. The first one is increased capitalization on development expenses. I will come back to those. Then the savings related to the cost and efficiency program, and it is SEK500 million year-over-year. And then reduced amortization of intangible assets, which is in the neighborhood of SEK400 million. So if you don't take the capitalized R&D expenses -- I have gotten so many questions during the day today, so I feel it's good for me to explain a bit more around those, in front of all of you here on the call. So I'll do that. We had a reclassification in the quarter between inventory and capitalized R&D of a little bit more than SEK200 million -- and that hasn't -- that doesn't have a P&L impact, if you look at the details around this in our detailed financial tables. The other important thing to understand is that the way we work here, is that for major R&D development, investment or…

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Thank you, Jan. Coming into the segments, starting with networks much has been said when we go through the bridges, and what is happening in networks. Down 3% for currency adjusted but you can say as we said, we had a lower software sales in IP and core. On the other hand we had a more stable radio business especially North America and Southeast Asia. India, I talked about before. There are some lower investments there because the spectrum auctions. And we can also see that the European sorted by mobile broadband deployment is all completed and actually slower in pace. Operating income, Jan went through that, and what is fueling then the improvement with SEK2.1 billion. Two things on the business, we acquired NodePrime that is working with our and being a supplier to our HDS 8000 and that we acquired in the quarter. But also important is that we are now ramping our Ericsson Radio System and the larger volumes will come at the end of the year. But it's a very important milestone for us with a new product very efficient. Very much lower footprint as well as energy consumption, and high carriability. Services, where Jan had talked about, we had a flat quarter. However, net rollout down 12%. As Jan talked about, in services, professional services, then more flattish. Here, where as Jan said, we're coming down in profitability. It's a long time since we were that low on professional services. Network rollout as Jan said, that we're adjusting immediately, and that's more about having that we have overcapacity, and we are now addressing that quickly. On professional services, all the time, as I said at the morning's progress conference, I'm confident that we should be there between 12% to 15% operating margin professional services. Right…

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Okay. So I think, a couple of main messages here is that, we will continue to look at the profit improvement plan, and the potential of the Company in these three different buckets that you can see on this picture, meaning efficiency, monetized footprint, and build success in targeted areas. I think, efficiency is clear. We have the SEK9 billion net savings program. Some of the things that Hans mentioned are important here, from an efficiency point of view. For instance, making sure that we can dimension supply and service delivery more end-to-end, to also reduce a bit of the volatility that we have, and also experienced now in Q1 for instance, in terms of utilization of resources. That's one example. Then the monetized footprint, of course, to have services and product businesses very close to each other. It's focusing on our main customer base, the operators as they transition the business from 3G to 4G, and 4G to 5G to make sure we are relevant for them, stay close to them and so forth, it's important. And then, build success in targeted area. Here we will have now business units with clear accountabilities to deliver the business cases here. If we take the next then. So if we take the five business units, that then will be in place from July 1 of this year, our intention is then to change the segment reporting externally, to reflect all of these five business units. We will do that then, beginning January 1, 2017. So, the first time that you will see these new segments will be at the quarter report then in April I guess of 2017. We will come back with more information to all of you at the Capital Market Day in November. And we will do our best to restate numbers as soon as possible and also to get them audited. And for sure, we will make sure it will happen in the beginning of 2017, so you have enough time to adjust your models, and understand performances and so forth. So with that, back to you, Hans.

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Yes. No, I have basically have nothing more to add. Again, we're putting a structure in place, in order to accelerate the strategy execution. They're two reasons, one is the external customer dimension that we have created scale in these areas that we call the target areas, in order to have a fully blown organization to really execute on it. The second is that we think that we can really execute even stronger and harder when accounts growth as well as profitability improvements. And that's in our [indiscernible] to see that we are doing that. So that's what we are announcing. And that also means that there have been several new appointments in the leadership team, in order now to stack up this organization as valid from the 1st of June -- July, I should say, 1st of July 2016. Many dates here and that's about it.

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Thanks, Hans. With that, I would like to invite you all for the Q&A session. So operator, you can open up please, for questions?

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Alexander Duval of Goldman Sachs.

Alex Duval

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Yes, good afternoon. It's Alex Duval from Goldman Sachs. I had a couple of quick questions. My first one is on gross margin, which is obviously about 200 bips below market expectations when adjusting for the patent's catch-up in the first quarter. So it looks like for the last two or three quarters, those have been challenging. Could you just help us understand in a bit more detail what precisely is driving that? The reason I ask, is it looks like regions like North America and Japan were actually quite decent on the network side and they typically have better gross margins. So I'm just wondering, are you engaging in discounting on pricing? Is competition getting harder given the broader tough conditions that you referenced in your introductory remarks? And second of all, if I look at 5G, you talked about the excitement around that and clearly, there's work being done in terms of in setting standards. But when should we really think about the first large scale rollouts? Is 2020 a reasonable time frame to be thinking about that? And if that's the case, then should we really be preparing for radio base station declines realistically for the next few years? That would be very helpful, to get some color. Many thanks.

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Okay, Alex, it's Jan. I'll take the first question, and I then hand over to the boss for the second question. So on gross margin then, it is the way I tried to tell you. It is we had obviously the positive driven by the IPR revenue and also by the positive driven by mainly capacity in North America. I mean, to a certain degree [indiscernible] but it's mainly in North America. That's why it's written in the report. And then, it was unfortunately offset then by lower margins in the first quarter, driven by the things I mentioned which is then global services, lower revenue in the core and IP area and it's mainly we had last year's Q1's strong and impact core business in North America and also big core or routing deployments in mainland China that we don't have this year. So those are the challenges. I think on your second part of that same question, we have had a challenge in gross margin for a few quarters. We have had a business mix for a few quarters and that's also applicable for this quarter which is smaller coverage and hardware-centric business so that is impacting the mix. And the most important thing remains to be capacity versus coverage when it comes to defining the impact of the gross margin. And then on your question around competition and pricing and so forth, there is nothing new there. We are acting and living in a very competitive market. That has been the case for many quarters and many years. Every time there is big deployments on coverage and so forth the new footprint available, it has impact on the commercials. So that is the same the way it has been now for us for many years. But the things I mentioned on gross margin in Q1, are the important things for you to understand. Hans, on the second question, I'll to you then.

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Large commercial 5G deployments, that has to be beyond 2018. Of course, the standard by rules will be set 2020, so that is when we will see. We are going to see trials, and we've already announced we have 21 operators we're working with already. We have academia, and different type. And that's when we are setting the standard, but meaningful, large scale deployments after 2018, I would say 2020, but I want to be a little bit cautious, because I know that some markets really want to do a pre-commercial or pre-standard 5G. So let's see. I think, the most important that is there's still a big transformation of 3G to 4G happening in the world. I mean, they're a couple of markets that has completed the forum for 4G. But the majority are still on 3G, and we still have 2G as well. So that's coming, and that's of course, it's a prediction or evolution to 5G to make that. Because that means you need also change part of your core and all of that, that if application for 5G. So I think that's important. But as always, where you have sort of a coverage phase of a technology, and then you have a capacity phase. And that, where they're in different place in the world all the time.

Peter Nyquist

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Alex, are you happy with that answer?

Alex Duval

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Many thanks.

Peter Nyquist

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Thanks. Next question please?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from Sandeep Deshpande of JPMorgan.

Sandeep Deshpande

Analyst · JPMorgan

Yes, hi. Thanks. My question is regarding the services business itself. The margin in services was very low, and you cite the new contracts ramping up. But when we look at the revenue in services, the revenue services is down in professional services, down year-on-year. So can we try to understand the dynamics of what has happened in the services businesses, which has taken the margin down year-on-year, and will this persist through the year?

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · JPMorgan

I think that's an excellent question. And remember, I think that we'll had10 years of fairly consistent margins, and now and then we come down. So I think first of all, we should have all at least we have the confidence that professional services should be in the range we have talked about. So there are two different things happening with the margins. I mean, we're basically flat on professional services in constant currency, and we're down 12% in I think in network rollout. So there are two different dimensions here. On the network rollout, we have overcapacity, and that we are now addressing. We already started in March. That is sort of something that temporary we can do. That my depends a little bit on laws or regulations, labor rules, etcetera, how fast you can do it within certain markets. If it's Europe, for example, it's a little bit slower. If it's Latin America, it's a little bit quicker. But that we have already started there. When we look at the professional services there, it's a growing pains in system integration. That margin has come down, very much driven from that we have gained a lot of large digital transformations. And here, it's more about starting this up, have the right people at the right place etcetera. So we are in the beginning of that journey, with a couple of really large product. That may take a couple of quarters more to when they come back to normal. But it's basically like you're getting a lot of new system integration projects here in the beginning. And then over time, that will even out, of course. But I think, that's the two dynamics that we see in the margins. Jan, do you want to add something? No, but I think we'll sit. I think should be humble to what we report here. Hans and I, we have talked a lot about this, and also with among us. I mean, we have it is not easy to dimension services, especially between the fourth quarter and the first quarter, because fourth quarter is very high on activity level. And then typically Q1 is lower on activity level. This was a very big change between those two quarters this year. And I think we should have seen some of this a little bit earlier, I agree. But it's still not easy, and we are irritated on this one, and we also take action. But yes, to be clear. It is not simple to see this between Q4 and Q1, because Q4 is such a high activity level, and then it drops significantly in Q1.

Sandeep Deshpande

Analyst · JPMorgan

Okay. Thank you.

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · JPMorgan

And we should add to that, that the new structure we are putting into place, we will have an easier way to adjust these types of things, as we're moving more resources to the global centers, which means that we can adjust on a global level much quicker. Not saying that our regions are not doing it, but it's harder to see when you are sitting close to it. So that's part of the adjustment, and that's why we say we designed the organization to be even more efficient. Then you can always ask us, why haven't you done that earlier? I think the answer to that is, we have come to such a size in services, we can run this on a global level, talk the difference and we can even split services and still have scale in them. So, I think the timing is right. But I think Jan's comments are important as well. We are a little bit sad about this development, but we are taking corrective actions immediately here.

Peter Nyquist

Analyst · JPMorgan

Okay, Sandeep? Okay, operator, we're ready for next question, please?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Richard Kramer of Arete Research. Go ahead, your line is open.

Richard Kramer

Analyst · Arete Research. Go ahead, your line is open

Thanks. Two quick questions, please. For Hans, given that you're adding eight new members to your executive leadership team and you're restructuring, and you mentioned all the challenges, can you talk about taking on the role of the Swedish Olympic Committee and how many man hours are you going to take doing that? And is this the right time for a distraction like that? And for Jan, when you're looking at this the whole are of cloud and service providers, it's a very crowded space. And I'm just looking at your wanted margin position in 2020, and wondering is it realistic to expect a new area like cloud to yield those kind of margins, given that there are lot of large, established companies right now struggling to turn a profit in that space? Thanks.

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · Arete Research. Go ahead, your line is open

Thanks for the question. Yes, I think that it is going to be a long answer. But sport has been extremely important in my whole life, since I was a child. And that's my spare time life, that I work with sports. I have been the Chairman of the Swedish Handball Federation for eight years, and that job is probably even bigger than being the Chairman of the Swedish Olympic Committee. So that's my spare time job. It will not impact at all on my work. I have no other board assignments, not in any public boards or anything. So I think that's also healthy for someone like me, to develop myself, and work with other type of things, but it will not impact Ericsson at all.

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · Arete Research. Go ahead, your line is open

Okay. On your second question

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · Arete Research. Go ahead, your line is open

And I will leave the Swedish Handball Federation, by the way of course.

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · Arete Research. Go ahead, your line is open

Good, okay.

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · Arete Research. Go ahead, your line is open

And now, why don't you take the gross margin question?

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · Arete Research. Go ahead, your line is open

Yes, we will go from the Swedish Olympic committee to that, to the cloud. So, no, I think that again, very super relevant question, of course, Richard. I think our strategy remains to be the preferred partner towards telecom operators. In there, we focus very much on OSS, BSS which is now part of what you will see then being the cloud and IT product business unit. And we continue to drive utilization as a disruption, and also to build relevancy in systems around the next generation management systems, starting from 5G. That is our main strategy here, and as such, I think we are -- it is possible for us to differentiate ourselves and be relevant, which is in the end going to determine whether we can make good margins out of this or not.

Richard Kramer

Analyst · Arete Research. Go ahead, your line is open

I guess, the follow up is this, don't you see this cloud area has really a race to the bottom, in terms of lowest cost? And is Ericsson historically in a good position to lead that race?

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · Arete Research. Go ahead, your line is open

I think that, we, first of all, we probably need to define a little better the cloud, because they are both different. Remember now, the telecom worlds are now virtualizing, We call that cloud in our case, and that has not even started. I mean, on the public cloud point of view there, of course, we have a race to the bottom. But for virtualized products, it won't impact our core, to virtualize products like IMS, virtualize the TV and media solution, or virtualize revenue manager. That's of course -- that's of course what we are doing in this space. And of course, that is coming into our area. So that is basically what we are doing today. If you talk about cloud, it's very much more talk about virtualization, it's much more talked about for the clouds for telecoms. And then, of course, in this area we have the OSS, BSS as well, which we're created a very strong position in already. I'm not sure if that's clarifying.

Richard Kramer

Analyst · Arete Research. Go ahead, your line is open

No, I get it. Okay, thank you.

Peter Nyquist

Analyst · Arete Research. Go ahead, your line is open

Thank you.

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · Arete Research. Go ahead, your line is open

So we are not planning to go into public or private clouds and compete there with something. Just to be clear with that.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst · Arete Research. Go ahead, your line is open

Operator, next question, please? Hello? Operator, we are ready for next question.

Operator

Operator

Sorry, our next question comes from Edward Snyder of Charter Equity Research, go ahead, your line is open.

Edward Snyder

Analyst · Charter Equity Research, go ahead, your line is open

Jan, when do you expect the higher capitalization of R&D to become a head wind to your margins when it increases amortization costs? And then, Hans, the restructuring program seems to be targeted both at cost and efficiency, as well as growth. Is the growth portion more share gains, or do you expect TAM expansion from new products, and do you think you could possibly get to single-digit growth in any of the next couple of years? Thanks.

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · Charter Equity Research, go ahead, your line is open

Okay. The first answer to your question, we have had quite a big [nat] meaning that capitalization and amortization has been quite -- a big difference between those two items, since basically the second quarter of last year, up until Q1. I think during the course of the year, you will start to see these numbers normalize. And if exactly, that it is going to take place in second quarter or third quarter, it depends on the general availability dates of the software, because that is when we start the amortization.

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · Charter Equity Research, go ahead, your line is open

On the growth then, of course, remember there are two reasons. One of course, is efficiency. But if you talk about the growth, I think it's more the TAM expansion. Remember that OSS, BSS and those areas have a higher growth rates than the our traditional core areas. And remember, last year we showed that our targeted areas grew 20%, which is a combination of our software areas, product areas, and our service area. So, of course, partly it is actually that the [legalization] is happening. Media is more important for our customers, OSS, BSS is more important, the virtualization is happening. That means those TAMs are expanding, and I think that's the main reason for it. We know what -- we have talked about networks. That has a lower growth rate in the market. All in all, of course, the US dollar, as well as given what is happening with the macroeconomics situation. But that's -- so that's where we can see we are well-positioned in the targeted areas, and they have a higher growth rate. And that's why are also partly why we have chosen them, were chosen for our adjacency, but also that they have a higher growth rate, higher deal [software services] and recurrency.

Edward Snyder

Analyst · Charter Equity Research, go ahead, your line is open

And then on the restructuring program, it sounds like you're expanding significantly the responsibly, giving [eight] new VPs for other folks to take, and responsibility for some of the P&L decisions in the market. Do you think that would prevent things that you just saw, like the global services decline? And in that area, this was -- is a surprise? Was it like an order cancellation, or did you see contracts didn't play out the way you expected. I'm just trying to get a feel for why the big dislocation and how it caught you by surprise through the quarter? Is it one region? Is it multiple regions? Can you give us a little bit more color on that would be helpful? Thanks.

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · Charter Equity Research, go ahead, your line is open

I think, first of all, our gained the scaling global services that we now can actually allocate and give larger responsibility for certain service flows much higher up in the hierarchy. Which means yet, you can actually take actions much quickly if you see something global based on what is happening and that is part of what we are sort of put into the structure. When it comes to network rollout, I think as Jan said, of course, there, we knew that there were certain regions that were coming down in deployment. But it also went a little bit faster in some areas than we anticipated. On top of that, of course, then adjustments is taking different times, in different countries due to laws and regulations. So I think that is the combination on that but we are addressing it right now immediately.

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · Charter Equity Research, go ahead, your line is open

And then on your point, around the new structure and how will this issue with volatility mainly in mobile broadband projects, right? So it's, I mean, these projects are in-country specific customers, a customer rollout could take nine months, one year, and then they take lower pace for a year, and then they start again and so forth. How do you staff those projects from a services point of view, in an optimum way? I mean, our way of doing that is of course, that we use to the extent we can, subcontractors and consultants, especially where we have not so much big businesses. So if you have more customers, you can share amongst more customers the resources. Typically, we always make sure we have the senior project leaders and solution architects and so forth in-house. The way we intend to improve or reduce this volatility in terms of the situation we had now in Q1, which we also by the way, had in Q1 2014, but then it was left America if we all remember. I think, we all go and make sure that we have a better plan, end to end. And that's also, why Hans said that they had network services, we loaned the resources further out to customer, so we will take more risk on the global level. Still, I mean, this will continue from time to time to be a challenge for us, but it's something we have to learn, and also improve all the time.

Edward Snyder

Analyst · Charter Equity Research, go ahead, your line is open

Thank you.

Peter Nyquist

Analyst · Charter Equity Research, go ahead, your line is open

Okay, thanks, Ed. We're open for the next question, operator?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Next question comes from Simon Leopold of Raymond James. Go ahead.

Simon Leopold

Analyst · Raymond James. Go ahead

Thank you very much. I wanted to ask two things. One is sort of a relatively simple, and the second is more thematic. On the simple side, just wondering in terms of your expectations for patterns through the year for seasonality if you're expecting more of a backend load than typical seasonality in the course of calendar 2016? And in terms of thematic aspect, I'm wondering how much of the challenge in Europe may be related to the industry structure of your customers? Looking at some of the statistics, it looks like in Europe, you've got 19 operators controlling 90% of the lines versus China with almost 100% among three in the U.S., and 90% of lines among four. And I have been reading a lot more about the M&A challenges among operators in Europe. Does this create some challenges for you, in terms of weaker customers, and uncertainty about their prospects of consolidating and becoming scale buyers? Thank you.

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · Raymond James. Go ahead

I thought with the second question, I mean, you're on to something, of course. Strong customers being able to invest and continue to do things, of course, and if you have five operators in a country like Sweden with 9 million people or 10 million people of course, they will have a tougher time, compared to what the sizes of operators you're talking about. So there's a certain extent of that and that's why we see some attempts for inter-country consolidations to get that scale for many of our customers. So what does that mean for us? I mean usually it is, of course, then a tougher environment because our customer has a tougher environment. I think that's how it works. Where it will go, it's a little bit too early to say, but clearly we see the trends that they want to do inter-country consolidation and even industry overall chain consolidation in order to get strength. But that's still to be seen. Some has already been done, as we know.

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · Raymond James. Go ahead

On the seasonality of patents, it's Jan here. I think the way to think about both Q4 of last year and Q1 of this year, is that we had some extra boost in revenue for different reasons. In Q4, it was obviously the [indiscernible] agreement and in Q1, it was two other agreements signed. I think going forward for the rest of this year we are back a little bit more to normal and I think normal is a good way to think about 2014 volumes. And you had asked that for FX. Most of the revenues is in U.S. dollars so that would be how I look at seasonality for patents, at least with the visibility I have right now.

Peter Nyquist

Analyst · Raymond James. Go ahead

Okay, Simon, are you happy with that?

Simon Leopold

Analyst · Raymond James. Go ahead

Yes. Thank you very much.

Peter Nyquist

Analyst · Raymond James. Go ahead

Thank you, Simon. Next question please, operator?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Francois Meunier of Morgan Stanley. Go ahead, your line is open.

Francois Meunier

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Go ahead, your line is open

Thanks. Yes, a quick question, because I'm a bit confused with the new organizational plan. I think you had five sub sectors where you where planning to grow the business, while the rest is kind of declining. I think you had the IP routing, OSS, BSS, TV stuff, these types of things, and I think I forgot about what the fifth one was. But where are those going, and are you expecting still growth from those, is the first question? The second one, very quickly services margins. You answered already, but what I wanted to know is the shape of the recovery? Is it going to be a quick fix, or the beginning of a long journey?

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Go ahead, your line is open

Okay. On the first one, no we you are right in the report, these target areas and you were absolutely right. The one you missed was TV and media. You can say that they had the worst of good growth in the first quarter, not equally good as the last year 20%. But we see still the momentum in them, and they are important of course, impact of some of the emerging markets but we still believe that they have higher potential of growing. Importantly, how we now define the structure of the company, and it's really to show they're sort of the IT cloud, which is always SB cloud, SMB cloud and applications there. And then of course, media is media. And then in the society, it's a separate line to our customers. So we are sort of bringing them out in that. In IP, we of course have our partnership with Cisco that we will continue to report on.

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Go ahead, your line is open

Okay, on the question around services then, Francois. If we take network out to start with, our I mean, intent is not to let this take many quarters. We know that last time we had this, it took us many quarters to get back from a network rollout point of view. We have already started late Q4, and during Q1 with activities. Our intention is to fix this as soon as possible. I cannot guarantee that we will be back on breakeven on network rollout already in Q2, but I mean we are driving it as fast as we can. On the professional services side, the system integration piece there. I mean, it's going to, it's not a cost reduction exercise. It's more the learning curve, having the right people and so forth. So it's not going to be a fix over a quarter. It's going to hopefully be gradual improvements over a couple of quarters, and at the end of the day of course this is also going to come with some growth, right? So it's a little bit different, the profile of the two challenges we have in services, based on Q1 performance.

Francois Meunier

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Go ahead, your line is open

Okay. So, I know there will be a media basically?

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Go ahead, your line is open

Well, I think that's I don't know if that was the question. I think services, we are not happy with the performance in Q1. We are starting, executing the things we have said. And I agree with you, it's going to be at least the start of this year, that is going to be more challenging than last year.

Francois Meunier

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Go ahead, your line is open

All right. Thank you very much.

Peter Nyquist

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Go ahead, your line is open

Thank you, Francois. Next question, please operator?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Garrett Jenkins of UBS. Go ahead, sir. Your line is open.

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · UBS. Go ahead, sir. Your line is open

Hi, Garrett.

Garrett Jenkins

Analyst · UBS. Go ahead, sir. Your line is open

Hi, just a quick one on networks margins. I think, if you adjust for the one off items in [Indiscernible] it looks like network margins dipped below 10%, which I know is your medium term aim. Do you think you can get your network margins back above 10% in this year? Or is that just sort of medium term aim? And secondly, just wondered if there's been any incremental costs associated with Cisco within services, that has maybe weighed the service portions down? Thank you.

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · UBS. Go ahead, sir. Your line is open

No, there are no, on the service side, there's no additional costs in services that weigh from Cisco. Of course, we are building up resources and preparing for solutions we're doing with Cisco, but that's the normal business practice.

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · UBS. Go ahead, sir. Your line is open

I think, on your question around one offs and so forth, I mean, the patent business, I agree that we had support by great patent business in Q1 as well. That is part of the business, as you know, Garrett. I think the, if you look at the overall underlying then, the networks performance, we have a business mix that is in Q1 more of coverage products and hardware centric, similar as Q4. I think that at least short term that, that it will be the business mix we operate with. And I have also said, that I want you to think about the volume aspect in Q2, considering the currency and so forth. But for sure, we are addressing the cost base, both in terms of the cost of the product, as well as service delivery and so forth. So the absolute ambition, that is that we are going to work hard to be at the 10% underlying operating margin. We have the situation in the market we have, and we have the programs we have. We are addressing costs and we are trying to stimulate more capacity. But right now, we have the market we have.

Peter Nyquist

Analyst · UBS. Go ahead, sir. Your line is open

Okay, guys. We are open now, operator, for the last question for this session, so please?

Operator

Operator

Thank you, our final question comes from Kai Korschelt from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please ask your question.

Kai Korschelt

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please ask your question

Hi, gentlemen. Thank you. I just [now had a slightly bigger picture] question on the [SEK9 billion] program. So at least for this year, it seems the gross margin is now, something like 200 or 300 basis points lower compared to 2014, which I believe is your base year. So I guess, to deliver [SEK9 billion] EBIT improvement, you need to take out another [SEK6 billion] or [SEK7 billion], compared to just three months ago, right? Just because the gross margin is that much lower? I'm just wondering, are you prepared to do this? It seems like a very high incremental step. If you are then, when are we going to see, I guess, the announcements, or the evidence of this? Thank you.

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please ask your question

Okay, Kia, it's Jan. Thank you for the question. So first and foremost, when we make the statement we do around the net savings plan, [SEK9 billion], and we are executing towards that, and that's our ambition. When it comes down to the other question raised around gross margin, of course, if we will end up 2017 with a significantly different business mix and so forth, then we will have to obviously talk about that when that happens. So far, we think it's too early to speculate around business mix for 2017. We will continue to execute on the things that we can do, without putting any business at risk, but still improving efficiency and so forth. And you see, we will continue to make announcements. But we have this principle of making those announcements to the one's concerned first. And we will continue to do that, Kai.

Kai Korschelt

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please ask your question

Okay, Much appreciated.

Peter Nyquist

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please ask your question

Thank you, Kai. And maybe Hans, the closing remarks?

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please ask your question

No, I think that you have asked a lot of questions. We are in the first quarter. It is, of course, a mixed quarter with some positives, but also some challenges. I think we are taking actions. I think we have a great portfolio, and a great solutions, but then services portfolio, and it's for us now to put the structure in place, and we will do that from the first of June, and that should help us in this -- July, 1st of July. I say June all the time. It's not the Freudian slip, it's 1st of July, And in order execute on our strategy and accelerate that, in order to address both the market's perspective and the business perspective, but also our financial performance that we want to improve. I think that we are feeling very energized. We have a new team coming into place here, with a lot of great experience and people. So we are excited. Of course, it's a challenging time, but we are taking everything we can control, and we will do that well and fast.

Jan Frykhammar

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please ask your question

Okay, thank you.

Hans Vestberg

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please ask your question

Thank you. Good bye.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This now concludes the conference. Thank you all very much for attending. You may now disconnect.