HELSINKI: Finland’s telecoms giant Nokia reported Thursday that it remained deep in the red at the start of the year, with sales in its main business, networks, on the decline. But the stock market rejoiced as analysts’ fears of a much worse performance were allayed. The company posted a loss of 488 million euros ($532 million) in the first quarter, an improvement from the 609 million euros a year earlier, prompting chief executive Rajeev Suri to say he believed in an “improving business momentum, even if some challenges remain”. Investors agreed with that assessment, sending Nokia’s share price more than six percent higher on the Helsinki stock exchange to 5.29 euros by late morning. While the company’s overall sales declined by two percent to 5.38 billion euros, sales in its core networks business fell by six percent, to 4.9 billion euros. An analyst at Aurel BGC, a Paris brokerage, called the results “quite reassuring” because investors had been expecting a steeper decline in networks revenues. “Markets have known for a long time that the trend is not very good,” he told AFP. Most importantly, profit margins were better than those generated by Swedish rival Ericsson, the analyst said.