CNBC reported on Wednesday that Nokia (NOK) was readying a takeover bid that would value Juniper Networks (JNPR) at around $16 billion, sending shares in Juniper up 18% in after-hours trading.
However, European tech equipment maker Nokia denied it was considering an offer for the Sunnyvale, California-based company. Juniper shares were down 7.13% in Thursday premarket trading, following the denial, with an indicative opening price of $27.49, making it one of the top losers of the morning.
Espoo, Finland-based Nokia has been concentrating on its telecom equipment business, with a focus on the Internet of Things, 5G and the cloud, since selling its mobile phone unit to Microsoft Corp. (MFST) .
Nokia last year closed its $17 billion merger with French telecom equipment giant Alcatel-Lucent but it is coming off a third quarter in which its core Nokia Networks unit saw revenue drop 9% annually amid weak U.S. and Chinese mobile infrastructure demand. Nokia has also guided for Networks' "primary addressable market" to decline by 4% to 5% in 2017 in constant currency (CC), and by 2% to 5% in CC in 2018.
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