Finnish vendor Nokia has reported an increase in net sales of nine percent for the final quarter of 2024.

The company noted that this was due to strong growth of its network infrastructure products, plus an increase in demand in North America.

Pekka Lundmark, CEO of Nokia, is confident the strong end to the last financial year will continue in 2025.

In the company's earnings report, Nokia said that all of its network infrastructure units contributed to the increased sales, noting that Nokia Technologies grew significantly, while cloud and network services also grew.

The vendor also said it won 18,000 additional base station site deals last year.

"We also secured many important deals, winning 18,000 additional base station sites, since the start of 2024 on a net basis," said Lundmark.

In total, Nokia posted net sales of €5.9 billion ($6.14bn) for the fourth quarter. Despite the nine percent improvement year-on-year, Nokia's overall net sales for the full year declined nine percent, down to €19.2bn ($20bn).

Lundmark, however, is confident the company is turning a corner going into 2025.

"We saw a strong finish to 2024 with 9 percent net sales growth year-on-year in Q4. I am optimistic that the improving market trends we are now seeing will persist into 2025," he said.

"Looking further ahead into 2025, we expect the improved trends we have seen in network infrastructure in the second half of this year, to sustain and drive strong growth. Cloud and Network Services is also expected to grow with strong 5G Core momentum and growth in our Enterprise Campus Edge business."

Nokia denied reports in September that it was looking to replace Lundmark, who has been CEO at Nokia since 2020. He first joined Nokia in 1990 as an account manager, before leaving in 2000.

For the year ahead, Nokia said it forecasts an operating profit of between €1.9bn ($1.98bn) and €2.4bn ($2.5bn) in 2025.