Key points
- Five Nokia (NOK) insiders bought about $2.2 million of stock between July 24 and July 29.
- Board chair Timo Ihamuotila added 60,000 shares, his third purchase of 2026, for 210,000 on the year.
- Nokia is down about 50% from its June 2 peak, even after Q2 profit grew and AI and cloud orders hit a record 2.8 billion euro.
- Two insiders who bought near May's highs are down about 46%, so this is not a timing signal.
Three Nokia (NOK) insiders bought shares on July 24. Two more bought on July 29. In between, the stock fell another 7 percent. That gap is what sent me to the filings.
All five showed up on our insider buying tracker. Together they picked up 238,720 shares for roughly $2.2 million, and the group includes the chair of Nokia's board.
Nokia is a Finnish company, so its executives do not file the Form 4s that U.S. company insiders do. Foreign private issuers are exempt from that rule. Instead Nokia discloses these trades under Article 19 of the EU's Market Abuse Regulation, publishing a separate stock exchange release for each person within three business days. The disclosures are actually more detailed than a Form 4. They break the purchase down by trading venue and give a volume weighted average price.
Here is the week, in order.
| Date | Name | Role | Shares | Price | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 24 | Pallavi Mahajan | Chief Technology and AI Officer | 62,000 | $9.5500 | $592,100 |
| July 24 | Timo Ihamuotila | Board chair | 60,000 | 8.4522 euro | $577,000 |
| July 24 | Patrik Hammaren | President, Technology Standards | 43,293 | 8.4420 euro | $415,800 |
| July 29 | Kristen Pressner | Chief People Officer | 66,324 | 7.8402 euro | $591,800 |
| July 29 | Mikko Hautala | Chief Geopolitical and Government Relations Officer | 7,103 | 7.8402 euro | $63,400 |
Pallavi Mahajan bought hers on the New York Stock Exchange in dollars. The other four bought the ordinary share in Helsinki in euro, so the dollar values above are converted at about 1.14. One detail in the paperwork is easy to skip past and worth catching. Every one of these five filings gives the nature of the transaction as an acquisition. When shares arrive through a compensation plan instead, Nokia files them under a different code, receipt of a share-based incentive, and none of the five carry it.
The chair has been buying all year
Timo Ihamuotila is the name worth pausing on. He became chair of Nokia's board on April 9, 2026, elected at the board's assembly meeting right after the annual general meeting. He also knows the company's books better than almost anyone alive, because he was Nokia's chief financial officer from 2009 to 2016. He spent the years after that as CFO of ABB.
July was his third purchase of the year. He bought 100,000 shares in January at 5.374 euro, another 50,000 in late April at 9.0961 euro, and 60,000 last Friday. That comes to 210,000 shares for about 1.5 million euro, at a blended cost near 7.14 euro. Nokia's New York listing at $8.43 works out to roughly 7.41 euro, so he is still a little ahead on the three purchases together.
He is not the only senior buyer this year either. Chief executive Justin Hotard bought 84,404 shares on April 28 at 9.1477 euro, about $900,000 worth.
Why the stock is down 50 percent
Nokia closed at $16.85 on June 2, the highest it had been in years, after a run driven by AI and networking demand. Wednesday afternoon it traded near $8.43, almost exactly half that.
The odd thing is that the business is not what broke. Nokia reported second quarter results on July 23. Net sales came in at 4,815 million euro, up 8 percent, and comparable operating profit reached 434 million euro at a 9.0 percent margin, wider than the 8.3 percent a year earlier. Network Infrastructure sales grew 12 percent, with optical networks up 20 percent and IP networks up 16 percent. AI and cloud order intake hit a record 2.8 billion euro in the quarter, and sales to those customers more than doubled. Hotard told investors Nokia expects to deliver somewhat above the midpoint of its full year guidance, which now runs 2.1 to 2.6 billion euro of comparable operating profit.
So what happened? Two things, mostly. The first is that only about half of that record order book turns into revenue within twelve months, by Hotard's own estimate, so the money arrives more slowly than the headline number suggests. The second has little to do with Nokia. Ericsson (ERIC) fell almost 12 percent on July 14 after warning about memory component costs, and investors marked down the whole telecom equipment group along with it. Nokia's own release says supply continues to be the main industry constraint. Going into June the stock had already climbed more than 200 percent in a year.
Two insiders bought near the top in May
Two other senior managers bought heavily in late May, near the top. Konstanty Owczarek put about $1.1 million into 70,000 shares at $15.35 and $15.99, and Victoria Hanrahan bought 44,682 shares for roughly $706,000 at $15.81. Both are down about 46 percent on those purchases today. They had the same view of the company in May that the July buyers had last Friday.
What the recent filings do show is which way Nokia's insiders have been moving. They sold four times between February and April, including 275,000 shares by David Heard in February and 150,000 by Raghav Sahgal in March. Since April 29 the tracker shows no insider sales at all. Everything since then has been buying.
None of it explains why, though. An Article 19 disclosure reports the trade and nothing more. Executives buy shares for reasons that have nothing to do with a forecast, including internal shareholding requirements, and Nokia asks its leadership team to build a stake in the company over time. Several of these purchases could partly reflect that.
Size is the other thing to keep in mind. Nokia is worth tens of billions of dollars. Two point two million is a rounding error against that, and against what these executives are paid. Who bought and when is the interesting part here, not the dollar total.
We wrote last week about Rep. Laurel Lee's spouse selling Nokia three times this year, including one sale on June 2, the exact day the stock peaked. Eight weeks later Nokia's own chair was buying at half that price. Any further purchases have to be disclosed within three business days, so the next couple of weeks will show whether these five were the end of it.
Sources
- Nokia stock exchange releases, managers' transactions: Pressner, Hautala, Ihamuotila, Mahajan, Hammaren
- Nokia Corporation Report for Q2 and Half Year 2026, July 23, 2026
- Resolutions of Nokia's Annual General Meeting and Board of Directors' Assembly Meeting, April 9, 2026
- Our insider buying tracker, updated as new disclosures land
- Related reading: Should you actually copy stocks bought by hedge funds, Congress, or insiders?
- Related reading: Micron's CEO sold $37.3 million in stock on a fixed schedule
- Price data via Yahoo Finance market data
- Cover image: Nokia corporate logo, via Nokia's brand resources
This reflects public regulatory disclosures and market data, not investment advice. Jennifer Song does not hold positions in the securities discussed. Prices are as of Wednesday afternoon, July 29, 2026, and will move. Always do your own research and consider speaking with a licensed financial professional before making any investment decision.
