For 128 years LM Ericsson brought telecommunications to the world's farthest reaches. Founded in Stockholm in 1876, it sold phones and set up exchanges in Mexico City and Shanghai around the beginning of the last century. Business in Russia was going so well in 1910 the company considered moving there. The company has been through wars, coups d'etat and natural disasters. Yet Ericsson was nearly crushed when the telecom business overreached in the late 1990s. It went through five chief executives in six years. Ultimately 55,000 jobs were cut. The stock dropped from $263 in March 2000 to $3.40 two years later. Today the company has turned a cor- ner—and a profit. Sales jumped 9% in the last year to $18 billion. Operating margins hit 23% in the quarter ending Sept. 30. The stock, too, returned to form—up 82% over the last 12 months, outpacing competitors Nortel, Lucent, Motorola and Nokia. Now the company hopes to complete the restoration under the leadership of Carl-Henric Svanberg, a formidable Swedish businessman who joined the company in April 2003 as chief executive. Over the next five years he hopes to capitalize on Ericsson's long-standing relationships in 140 markets worldwide to sell the networking technology that will help bring mobile telephony to 1 billion new customers, while offering the 1.6 billion existing customers mobile-phone-based applications that go well beyond ubiquitous voice and text messaging.
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