• Telia has just reported its 2025 results
• Service revenues grew but at an ‘unsatisfactory’ rate
• It is cutting about 4% of its staff to reduce costs but is also creating 150 new roles

Nordic operator Telia is cutting 600 jobs, just over 4% of its total headcount, but plans to hire 150 new employees to work in its “growth areas”, it noted in its latest earnings report. 

News had emerged earlier in January that about 200 positions were being cut in Finland, but now the company has stated: “In line with our commitment to continuous improvement, we initiated union negotiations in January 2026 concerning a proposed reduction of approximately 600 positions, while opening 150 new positions in growth areas such as business- and mission-critical connectivity, national data sovereignty, and security.”

Telia ended 2025 with 14,498 employees, down by 1,171 compared with the end of 2024.

The news came as Telia reported full year 2025 service revenues of 68.23bn Swedish Krona (SEK) ($7.73bn), a like-for-like increase of 1.5% compared with 2024, driven by gains in Sweden, the Baltic countries (Estonia and Lithuania) and its ‘other’ operations (telecom towers, finance and its units in Latvia).  

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 5.2% to SEK31.92bn ($3.6bn) “due to the combination of service revenue growth and lower operational expenses.”

And clearly the operator is keen to lower that operating expenditure again. 

Telia’s capital expenditure (capex, excluding spectrum and leases) for 2025 came in at SEK 12.8bn ($1.45bn), down by 4% compared with 2024.  

For the current year, Telia expects like-for-like service revenue growth of about 2%, adjusted EBITDA growth of about 3% and for its annual capex to once again come in below SEK 13bn ($1.47bn).

President & CEO Patrik Hofbauer noted: “We ended 2025 with an acceleration in service revenue growth, although we landed at 1.5% for the full year. This is unsatisfactory, as it is on the low side of our target of ‘around 2%’, and is the result of headwinds in Norway and Finland, which we are fully focused on turning around in the coming quarters.” 

Telia ended 2025 with 25 million customers across its mobile, broadband and TV operations. Sweden is its largest single market, where it has almost 3.88 million mobile, 1.43 million broadband and 1.2 million pay-TV service customers. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV