HELSINKI — Finnish telecommunication giant Nokia improved its profits in the third quarter this year, but the emerging problems of its network business resulted in a sharp decline of its stock value on Thursday.

The Q3 results released on Thursday showed a nine percent decline in the turnover of the network sector and a seven percent decline for the whole company.

Following publication of the results, the value of the Nokia share dropped 17.5 percent by evening and ended up with stock value at 4.2 euros ($4.89). Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri said that the network business "will face challenges" during the remainder of 2017 and next year.

Analysts have predicted that the mobile network market will shrink 2-to-5 percent next year. Suri attributed the trend to increased competition in China, to changes in technology and to possible mergers of operators in some countries.

Nokia increased its profits, however. The July-September surplus was 668 million euros, 20 percent more than in 2016. Therefore the Nokia board of directors plans to suggest that dividend to stock owners be increased by 2 euro cents to 0.19 euros.

Nokia described the agreement on patent licences with LG as a highlight of its Q3 performance.