DOX vs NOK: Which Is the Better Buy in 2026?

Same yardstick, side by side (as of August 2026). Valuation lined up like this is most meaningful for two names in the same corner of the market, which these are. Figures are approximate; verify before investing.

Reading it: DOX is the cheaper of the two on forward earnings, but cheaper is not the same as better. Pair the valuation with growth (how far the forward P/E sits below the trailing P/E) and risk (beta) before you decide.

The metrics above tell you which is the marginally better business. The bigger risk for most people is not picking the slightly worse stock, it is over-concentrating. DOX and NOK share themes, so owning both, or adding either to what you already hold, can quietly push a large share of your portfolio into one bet.

This is the part a generic comparison page cannot answer, because it depends on what you own. Connect your brokerage and Walnut shows your real, combined DOX and NOK exposure, flags overlap with your existing positions, and tells you if adding one would tip you past a concentration you are comfortable with, read-only by default, with your login staying at your broker. Walnut is not an investment adviser.

Amdocs Limited builds and operates the software that communications and media companies use to sell, bill and support their services. Its products sit in what the industry calls BSS and OSS: customer care, product catalogs, charging and billing, and order management on the commercial side, plus network orchestration, provisioning and service assurance on the operations side. Most of the revenue no longer comes from selling licenses. It comes from managed services, where Amdocs staff run those systems inside the carrier's own environment under multi-year contracts, a line that reached a record $791 million, or 67% of sales, in the June 2026 quarter. The rest is systems integration and cloud migration, the slow work of lifting decades-old on-premise stacks onto AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Customers include AT&T, T-Mobile US, Vodafone, Telefonica's Vivo, Comcast, Lumen, Sunrise and Liberty Latin America. The company was founded in Israel in 1982, is incorporated in Guernsey, runs its main operating centers in Ra'anana and in Chesterfield, Missouri, employs roughly 30,000 people, and closes its fiscal year on September 30.

Full DOX guide

Nokia is a global supplier of telecom and networking infrastructure, based in Espoo, Finland, and listed in the US as an ADS under the ticker NOK. As of January 2026 the company reorganized into two primary operating segments: Network Infrastructure (Optical Networks, IP Networks and Fixed Networks) and Mobile Infrastructure (Core Networks, Radio Networks and the Technology Standards patent-licensing unit). A separate Portfolio Businesses segment holds units management considers non-core. Nokia also earns high-margin licensing income from a large 5G and cellular patent portfolio.

Full NOK guide

Both fit overlapping themes, but they are not interchangeable. The useful comparison is which set of drivers and risks you want exposure to.

• DOX drivers: Managed services turned a project vendor into an annuity; Cash return is carrying the load the growth rate is not.
• NOK drivers: AI and data-center networking demand; Margin recovery and reorganization.

A faster-growing, richer-valued name usually swings harder, so it suits a longer horizon and a higher tolerance for volatility; a steadier, more cash-generative business suits a more conservative or income-minded investor. The honest test is which set of risks you could hold through a drawdown: Customer concentration is the structural risk: AT&T has accounted for roughly a quarter of revenue in recent years and T-Mobile US is the next largest, so one carrier's budget decision moves the whole income statement, and management has already said it expects T-Mobile revenue to decline in fiscal 2026 as non-recurring work winds down. For NOK, nokia competes directly with Ericsson and Huawei in mobile networks and with Cisco, Ciena, Juniper and Arista in IP and optical, so pricing pressure and share shifts are constant risks.

Pick DOX if you believe its drivers more; NOK if you believe its. Many investors hold both, but since they share themes, that is a concentrated bet, not diversification. Decide deliberately and check overlap. For the full detail, see the DOX and NOK guides.

DOX. At about $57 a share, DOX trades near 13.6 times trailing GAAP earnings and roughly 7 times consensus non-GAAP earnings, a multiple usually reserved for businesses the market expects to shrink. Much of the gap between those two figures is the $106 million restructuring charge taken in the June quarter, which weighed on GAAP results without changing the cash flow guidance. Whether the discount is deserved depends less on any single quarter's revenue than on whether the 12-month backlog keeps renewing at current margins.

NOK. Nokia's trailing revenue is roughly $23 billion, and full-year 2025 operating profit was about EUR 2.0 billion. On reported (GAAP) earnings the P/E screens high, in the range of the 80s to 90s on a trailing basis, because restructuring charges and one-off items depress net income, so investors often look at comparable operating profit and free cash flow instead. The stock trades near the mid-single-digit dollars per ADS and pays a modest dividend.

Headline figures (approximate, August 2026): DOX shows revenue (ttm) ~$4.65 billion, revenue (q3 fy2026) ~$1.175 billion, up ~2.7% year over year, non-gaap diluted eps (q3 fy2026) ~$1.84, 12-month backlog ~$4.26 billion, up ~2.7% year over year; NOK shows revenue (ttm) ~$23 billion, q1 2026 net sales ~EUR 4.5 billion (+4% YoY), q1 2026 gross margin ~45.5%, fy2025 operating profit ~EUR 2.0 billion.

DOX and NOK are related but distinct: same themes, different businesses and risks. Neither wins in the abstract; the right pick is whichever thesis you actually believe, sized so you are not over-concentrated in one theme. Walnut can show your combined DOX and NOK exposure against your real portfolio. It is not an investment adviser.