Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Johanna Ahlqvist - SEB, Research Division - Analyst : Two questions if I may. The first one, tag along on previous questions on competition. But do you see -- I mean, 2 of your competitors are struggling a bit on the product side. So do you see any irrational pricing behavior in the market as of now due to that? And the second question relates to OpEx, which was quite low in the quarter, as you say, partly related to less traveling due to the pandemic. But when you plan for 2021 on your OpEx, do you assume some sort of traveling resuming and things going back to normal that OpEx will come up a bit, leaving all patent disputes and FX side? Or how should we look upon OpEx in 2021? Carl Mellander - Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ) - Senior VP, CFO and Head of Group Function Finance & Common Functions Thanks, Johanna. When it comes to OpEx going forward, what we can say, in general, and you know we don't really guide specifically on individual lines and so on in the P&L, but if you look at 2021 OpEx, we don't expect any massive moves compared with 2020. But of course, we have talked about a certain number of items that Cradlepoint, of course, is added. We only have 2 months of Cradlepoint in 2020 and of course, the full year '21. And then we have talked about litigation costs as well in relation to the IPR negotiations or renewals and so on. So there are certain items like that. But overall, I would say, 2020 is probably a fairly good guide for 2021 as well. When traveling will resume and to what extent, very hard to say. I guess that's something everyone in the world thinks about. I suppose a reasonable estimate is that we will not go back to pre-COVID travel levels, but it's likely to increase a bit from 2020 whenever we can say that we are out of the pandemic.