Yesterday's third-quarter results will not reverse the trend. Sales are down and the EBITDA margin target - already hardly ambitious - has been abandoned. As it is, the Swedish group's colossal R&D expenditure remains a bottomless pit.

Three years ago, after a long period of underperformance, we thought Ericsson's time had finally come, thanks to the first 5G deployments and Huawei's expulsion from the European and American markets.

Alas, the financial situation of operators is putting a damper on these hopes. In the U.S., they have debts that border on the unsustainable; in Europe, due to a far too fragmented market, they are unable to pass on the price increases needed to finance a new investment cycle.

In 2021, the acquisition of Vonage was grossly overpaid. Unsurprisingly, Ericsson took a $2.9 billion impairment charge this quarter in connection with the transaction. All this looks bad, especially in the wake of the scandal surrounding bribe payments to the Islamic State in Iraq.

This is not the first time Ericsson has been targeted by the US Department of Justice. There have previously been corruption cases in Djibouti, Indonesia and China. Some argue that this is a strategy to destabilize the Swedish company - owner of highly strategic know-how - with the activist fund Cevian as a Trojan horse.

Last year, market share gains were offset by the effects of inflation. This year promises to be equally disappointing: over the first nine months, the Swedish group is not burning cash - that's something - but it's not making any either.