Ericsson

lifted on the Stockholm Stock Exchange after this morning's report.

The company's profit is rising more than expected and market shares are being taken around the world when the new 5G network is expanded.

But CEO Börje Ekholm is concerned about the consequences of the Swedish Post & Telecom Agency's decision to exclude Chinese suppliers from the construction of the Swedish 5G network.

He is openly critical of how the Swedish authorities have handled the security screening and believes that they have gone much further than what the EU requires.

Concerns about what countermeasures the decision could lead to from the Chinese side:

"Extremely important"

- China is actually one of the fastest growing 5G markets.

It has more than 100 million 5G subscribers today.

For us, it is extremely important to be present in such a market, in order to simply drive our technology leadership, which the entire rest of our portfolio benefits from, he says.

The steel manufacturer

SSAB

also presented an interim report and the fourth quarter was unexpectedly strong.

At the same time, the company announced that it was withdrawing from the deal with Indian Tata Steel to buy their steelworks in IJmuiden, the Netherlands.

According to SSAB, the reason is that the purchase does not fit into the company's new investment in becoming the first in the world to use fossil-free steel production.

SSAB's share rose by more than 7 percent when the stock exchange opened.

1,000 services removed

The clothing giant

H&M also

came in with a report for the broken financial year.

Profit before tax during the period 1 September - 30 November fell compared with last year, but was still slightly better than what stock market analysts had expected.

However, the company is awaiting notification of the reintroduction of a dividend.

The telecom operator

Telia

also presented a report in which it reported a loss of billions, partly linked to the sale of Turkish Turkcell.

Relatively newly appointed CEO Allison Kirby is now starting work on reshaping the company, among other things, costs will be reduced by SEK 4 billion and at least 1,000 jobs will be eliminated.

5G is one of the factors that will help Telia to become a growing company again.

Telia's share rose slightly in morning trading.

The stock market as a whole fell slightly on Friday morning, though not dramatically much.

The OMX index fluctuated in the morning just below the zero line.