Here’s some helpful fundamental guidance…

Here’s some helpful fundamental guidance of what to look for in Nokia’s upcoming earnings conference call, from Gleacher & Co (they are very bearish on Nokia…and it’s always good to use the other side’s analysis in addition to your own):

Nokia is scheduled to report 1Q11 earnings before market open on Thursday.

Expect tough 1Q. We are at €0.09 EPS on €10.2bil revenue which is roughly in-line with street expectations that have come down in the last month, but we see downside risk to our estimates. Our checks with parts of Nokia’s supply chain have indicated incremental softness in the last month and we expect continued share loss in both smartphones and feature phones.

Earthquake impact in 2Q? We think the quake’s impact to margins could be greater than the impact to units as NOK faces higher component and logistics costs. Where NOK must limit production of one model, we think it will produce more of an alternate, which adds some risk of a demand mismatch and ASP pressure if the substitution is not accepted by customers. NOK has reduced its exposure to Japan from 25% of COGS in CY09 to about 12% today, which helps mitigate much of the impact. However, we still approximate 30-50bps of margin risk and 2-3% risk to units. This equates to about a $0.01-$0.02 impact relative to our 2Q model at $0.14 which is in-line with street estimates that have come down from $0.16 one month ago.

Can updated Symbian models make a difference? NOK introduced a refreshed Symbian UI (‘Anna’) and new models (E6, X7) for a 2Q launch. This could help extend the life of the Symbian platform during the WP transition, but we see Symbian phones as a legacy business and do not think the company will be rewarded for potential outperformance. We remain comfortable with our CY11/CY12 Symbian unit forecast of 92mil/51mil.

Feature phone business under pressure. Smartphone troubles have received more attention, but we are concerned that NOK’s feature phone business remains under pressure and could be the second shoe to drop.
Possible spin-off of NSN? NOK could consider a partial sale of NSN to private equity with media reports suggesting a valuation in the $3-$4bil range. This would be in-line with our sum-of-parts valuation which values the unit at $3.2bil. A $4bil valuation at the high-end would add about $0.10 of upside to our $7.50 sum-of-parts target.