Finally! Finland Is Off the Rocks – A Review of the Q2 Earnings Season
This summer’s weather in Finland was mixed: sunshine one moment, heavy rain the next. Investors took their own breaks from the markets, some sitting at the end of the pier, some out boating and others at various summer events. Proprius’ portfolio management team worked remotely throughout the summer, but this summer’s earnings season in Finland made for unusually pleasant reading.
The rally, which has now continued in Finland for more than 1.5 years, gained further momentum in early summer as Nokia joined the rally driven by AI-related investment and semiconductor demand. Its optical networking business in particular was swept up in the sharp rise. The rally did admittedly stall and reverse around Nokia’s results announcement, but for once the figures supported the early-summer enthusiasm. Nokia secured as much as EUR 2.8 billion of new data-centre-related optical networking orders. Earnings came in well above expectations, and guidance was refined towards the upper end of the range. Nokia is back!
More broadly, the rise in the Helsinki equity market found solid support specifically from strong earnings development. In previous earnings-season reviews, we have been waiting for the point at which expectations alone would no longer be enough: earnings would have to start justifying the valuation multiples that had already risen in 2025. The chart below from OP Markets (19 August 2026) provides a useful overview of how the Finnish companies they cover performed relative to consensus estimates.
Let us again go through the key observations by sector.
Machinery
This cornerstone of the Helsinki equity market did not disappoint this time either. Revenue grew as expected or slightly above expectations, earnings development was strong and, most importantly, order intake looked very healthy. Wärtsilä continues to benefit from data-centre investments. Konecranes and Hiab benefited from strong defence-industry demand, while Metso benefited from mining. There were nuances between the individual reports, but overall earnings are developing strongly and new orders are growing well. Everything is therefore in good shape here.
And that’s not all, as a shopping-channel presenter might say. The machinery sector was also very active on the M&A front during the quarter. Kone announced the largest acquisition in Finnish economic history, planning to acquire TK Elevator (formerly Thyssen’s elevator business) for no less than EUR 29.4 billion. If regulatory approvals are obtained, this will also be a historic mega-deal from the perspective of Kone’s shareholders. A large cash position will be put to work, new shares will be issued to the sellers and the debt taps will be opened as well. Kone has certainly opened the M&A game in style. Another acquisition that received less attention was Hiab’s relatively large US deal, in which it acquired refuse truck manufacturer Labrie Environmental Group for just over USD 1 billion. For Hiab, with a market capitalisation of around EUR 4 billion, this represents a meaningful move into a new product segment. In other words, the machinery sector is clearly pursuing growth through acquisitions.
Financials
Nothing new under the sun in this sector. Nordea’s earnings machine once again edged past expectations, generating a return on equity of more than 15%. Nordea also set an excellent example by already distributing dividends from this year’s earnings rather than unnecessarily keeping the money ‘in its own pocket’ for too long. Sampo, which reported in August, grew its insurance business by 8%, while profitability remained rock-solid. Both companies also made encouraging comments about improving customer demand. The same trend continued in asset management: with equity markets rising and bond yields still offering something, client interest in asset managers’ products remained healthy and earnings were very strong. One small negative was that asset managers with heavy exposure to real estate funds continued to suffer from the weakness of that market.
M&A activity was also visible in the financial sector. S-Bank made a tender offer for the shares of Oma Savings Bank, which has struggled in recent years, and it looks highly likely that the offer will succeed. Thanks to the bid, OmaSp was the strongest-performing share of the summer. Mandatum also went shopping, acquiring Swedish small-cap-focused asset manager Cliens for EUR 64 million. The market received the deal positively and considered the price attractive, especially if the small-cap environment begins to improve gradually.
Energy
This is where we find the Helsinki equity market’s earnings machine: Neste. A lot has happened at Neste over the past year, but the rise in the share price from EUR 7–8 last year to around EUR 30 today is a remarkable change. The Iran crisis pushed petrol and diesel refining margins to record highs, and Neste benefited enormously. In addition, policy decisions made last winter concerning renewable biofuel obligations have materially increased demand. At the same time, margins have recovered extremely well from where they were a year ago. Neste delivered very strong earnings, and as a result the aggregate earnings of the Helsinki equity market improved significantly year on year.
Fortum’s earnings are largely hedged through electricity sales agreements entered into earlier, so there were no major surprises. That said, Fortum’s share price had moved to a higher level on expectations surrounding the increase in data-centre power demand seen last year. As those orders are not yet reflected in electricity prices, the share price took a small step backwards.
Nokia and Technology
We already covered Nokia above, so let us look at some of the smaller technology companies. Small listed software companies have been beaten up very badly over the past year, but we are now seeing the first signs of life. Qt delivered what investors had been hoping for, reporting earnings clearly above expectations and, against a backdrop of pronounced pre-result pessimism, becoming one of the stars of the earnings season. Another name worth mentioning is Bittium, which is strongly linked to the defence industry. It delivered a very strong result and the share price rose by around 30% on the day. Among the smaller software companies, development remained modest and there were no major rushes higher. In some very illiquid names, even a decent report could still be met with a share-price decline on the day.
Retail, Construction and Other Consumer Sectors
In retail, expectations turned clearly more positive as consumers finally began to loosen their purse strings. Kesko’s grocery sales figures were clearly growing, as were Puuilo’s. Tokmanni also came through reasonably well in Finland, although Dollarstore, acquired in Sweden, remains its Achilles’ heel. Consumer-facing restaurant group NoHo benefited from the beautiful summer weather and busy terraces, as did Olvi. Consumers are clearly on the move again, and the wage increases and savings accumulated over recent years are finally beginning to flow into consumption. On the M&A front, Kesko announced in June that it would acquire Nordic technical wholesaler Dahl, another sign of confidence in the future and willingness to pursue growth through acquisitions.
Residential construction, by contrast, remains stuck. Prices of new and existing homes are so far apart that new residential construction has almost ground to a halt. Data-centre investments, however, have created a major demand spike for construction companies. They are springing up around the country like mushrooms after rain. Timetables are tight, but margins are attractive. GRK, Kreate, YIT and SRV all highlighted this future cash cow in their earnings presentations. It is of course positive that data-centre projects are being launched across Finland, as they are also helping to get Finland’s frozen economy moving again. GDP forecasts for Finland have been revised upwards one after another. In the spring, economic growth was expected to be around 0.5%; now forecasts are already around 2%. The change has been remarkably rapid and strong – Finland has moved into the group of Europe’s fastest-growing economies this year. Finland has (finally) started moving!
Small Caps
With a few exceptions, small caps on the Helsinki equity market have largely been treated as outcasts. Investors have shown little interest, while company earnings have hardly been a cause for celebration either. This earnings season is finally showing some signs of light. A recovery in the domestic economy tends to benefit small companies more than average, as larger companies are much more exposed to global markets. It now looks as though many areas are at, near or already past the bottom, and the companies in our Proprius Micro Finland fund have reported results broadly in line with expectations and, in some cases, gradually improving outlooks. This has been reflected in better fund performance during the earnings season. It has also been encouraging to see that even weak results no longer automatically lead to share-price declines in many cases, which is often a sign of bottoming sentiment. By contrast, even small beats have frequently been enough to trigger substantial share-price gains.
Summary
Q2 2026 was a very strong earnings season on the Helsinki equity market. Companies delivered on the higher expectations, and a surprisingly large number exceeded them. The enormous AI investments being made globally are also flowing through to Finnish companies via data-centre-related investment. Large defence-industry investments are meanwhile increasing demand among engineering companies’ customers, bringing the impact through to the Helsinki equity market as well. We have waited a long time for Finnish consumer sentiment to turn in this chaotic world, but this summer the ice finally began to melt. Consumers started buying and spending again, albeit still mostly on relatively small items given the economic environment. However, there is a strong chance that larger purchases will begin to pick up if unemployment also turns lower during the autumn. This should also open the taps for smaller companies, many of which either serve as subcontractors to larger companies or derive a relatively larger share of their demand from the domestic market. On current indications, the autumn IPO market is likely to be busy, as some projects were postponed in late spring because of the Iran war and readiness to bring them to market has undoubtedly increased.
Wishing all our readers a great start to the autumn investing season.
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