Nokia Revamps Its Financial Reporting Structure In Advance Of The Microsoft Deal

Nokia today announced that it will restructure its financial reporting as its deal with Microsoft nears completion.

For the fourth quarter of 2013, Nokia will mark its Devices and Services division as a discontinued business. Setting up its financials to reflect the deal’s potential impact is a good way to prepare investors for future change.

If you sell off a chunk of your revenue, investors are going to notice when your top line shrinks in the next quarter.

Here’s the company on its changes:

After receiving shareholder approval of the pending sale of substantially all of its Devices & Services business at our Extraordinary General Meeting in November last year, Nokia is reporting substantially all of its Devices & Services business as discontinued operations in its fourth quarter 2013 and full year 2013 results report.

Nokia currently has three continuing businesses: Nokia Solutions & Networks (NSN), HERE and Advanced Technologies. Reflecting this composition, Nokia will publish financial information for all three businesses in next week’s report. Specifically, Nokia will report financial information for a total of four reportable segments – Mobile Broadband and Global Services within NSN, HERE, and Advanced Technologies – and, additionally, separate information for Discontinued Operations.

When will the damn deal close? Well, soon. That’s what I keep hearing. If it hasn’t been locked down by the start of the second week of February, I will be surprised.

Friend of TechCrunch Brad Sams this morning published a piece on Neowin that indicated it’s “likely” that the Nokia-Microsoft Great Asset Transfer would take place on January 23. Both companies will report their earnings that day (they have announced in lockstep for some time, so don’t read too much into that), making it a pat date for the news.

But that only works if the deal is done. And it isn’t. Still though, we’ll get a good look at what Nokia will be after the deal closes when it reports its performance. And that’s exciting.