Network vendor Ericsson reported an increase in sales of six percent Year-over-Year (YoY) for the final quarter of the 2025 financial year.

The Swedish telecoms giant, which announced its financial earnings this morning (January 23), reported overall sales growth of two percent YoY.

During the last quarter, Ericsson highlighted growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, South East Asia, Oceania, and India, while the Americas were broadly stable. Sales in the company's North East Asia market declined.

The final quarter saw Ericsson report sales of SEK 69.3 billion ($7.68bn), while full-year sales hit SEK 236.7 billion ($26.2bn).

Ericsson said that this was down to growth in the company's networks, cloud software, and services.

“Our Q4 results demonstrate solid execution of our strategy priorities. It is encouraging that we delivered organic growth in a flattish RAN market environment through our efforts in mission-critical networks, 5G core, and enterprise. The operational actions we have taken in recent years have resulted in improved margins and cash flow, with a ninth consecutive quarter of year-over-year adjusted EBITA margin expansion," said Börje Ekholm, president and CEO.

Ekholm also provided his expectations for the year ahead, noting that the RAN market will remain flat.

"For 2026, we expect the RAN market to be flat. Mission-critical and enterprise markets, where we are well-positioned, are expected to grow. In this environment, we plan to increase investments in defense during 2026 while continuing to optimize our cost base to support margins and cash flow generation," he added.

During the company's earnings call, Ekholm also confirmed plans to further reduce the overall headcount at the vendor.

"And you have seen that we have reduced the headcount, for example, by 5,000 over the past year. And we expect to continue reducing headcount going forward," said Ekholm.

It comes after Ericsson confirmed plans to cut up to 1,600 jobs in its home market, Sweden, last week. At the time, the vendor said the move was to "ensure the company's competitive position."

Ericsson's total headcount stands at around 90,000 globally, though this is down from around 100,000 three years ago, during which the vendor cut 8,500 jobs worldwide.

Ericsson's case for defense opportunities

The vendor also noted on the call that it has identified the defense sector as an area of growth for the year.

Ekholm said that Ericsson will increase R&D investments in defense and mission-critical opportunities in 2026.

"We see actually the communication market in defense to be a sizeable opportunity that we want to make sure we’re early on in," Ekholm told analysts.

"But there are also other applications. Think about defense from a broader perspective. The sensing capabilities of the solutions we have actually allow you to, for example, do drone detection. Think about the usefulness of that. And it can do detection of objects that are not connected."