Ericsson signed a credit facility agreement of €250 million ($292.7 million) with the European Investment Bank. The disbursement can be made in any currency that is widely traded on the foreign exchange markets and the credit facility will mature five years after disbursement.
Carl Mellander, chief finance officer of Ericsson, said, “We are very pleased to announce the new funding from the European Investment Bank. It will support our research and development activities for 5G and extend our debt maturity profile.”
The financing will support research and development activities for 5G and is in line with Ericsson’s focused business strategy. 5G networks, the next generation of mobile networks, are expected to be put in service in 2018 with commercial deployments on a large scale in 2020.
“The development of 5G technology is easily one of the most important innovation initiatives for the telecom industry in the coming years,” said Alexander Stubb, vice president of the European Investment Bank. “Ericsson has been one of the defining contributors to what mobile telephony is today and I think we can only be proud to support this. Apart from supporting European technology, this project will also make sure that thousands of highly-skilled jobs will stay in the EU.”
Ericsson supports open telecom standards and holds some 45,000 patents, with more than 23,600 employees in research and development.
