Tag: blackberry profits

The brand is already struggling to return to a smartphone space that is only increasing in competition.

The attempts being made by BlackBerry to return to a level of success in the smartphone hardware business is certainly an ongoing one, but it appears that the company has been fighting an uphill battle.

Analysts from Scotia Capital are now saying that the company will be reaching a “critical juncture” in 2016.

As much as CEO John Chen has insisted that BlackBerry will not be leaving the hardware industry and while a number of highly strategic moves have been made to help ensure that its smartphones will keep heading to store shelves – and into the hands of consumers and business users – the fact is that it is continuing to lose subscribers and money. In fact, just as the analysts made their prediction, the company also revealed that it would be laying off 125 employees in Canada, in addition to 75 workers in Florida who would also be losing their jobs.

The analysts see a number of different strategic options still left for BlackBerry as this year progresses.

The Scotia Capital analysts said that there are three main strategic options that the Ontario, Canada-based company currently has within its reach. The first would be to step out of hardware while facing a one-time cost that they predict to be around $100 million (USD). The second would be to license its operating system or brand as a whole to another hardware manufacturer. The third would occur if the company’s hardware segment manages to reach profitability this year, in which case it should continue its operations.

A great deal of the decisions that will be made by the company will depend on whether or not its latest smartphone, the Priv slider mobile phone powered by Android, ends up being successful in its sales. Investors have a very close eye on whether or not that key mobile device is managing to appeal to enough consumers to make it worthwhile.

At the same time, BlackBerry has been continuing its evolution as a provider of enterprise software. It could end up spending as much as $1 billion (USD) on the acquisition of companies over the next couple of years and still manage to keep up a net cash balance of $500 million (USD) in that business.

John Chen is feeling a good deal better about the company’s prospects regardless of slumping sales.

Outspoken BlackBerry CEO, John Chen, has spent his time at the helm of the company showing that he is not afraid to do things differently in order to allow the Canadian handset maker the opportunity to claw its way back into relevance and profitability and now, despite its slumping sales, it looks as though things have, indeed, been turning to a positive direction.

It now looks as though this has been only a time of sowing seeds that he now feels will spike mobile device sales.

That said, the latest sales results that BlackBerry has revealed have shown that there is still a long way to go before the company can truly feel that it is out of the woods. Indeed, it seems as though the direction that the company has taken is toward a positive turnaround, but at the same time, the efforts remain at the ground level. The genuine growth has yet to kick in. These latest announcements have caused the company’s stock to take a rollercoaster’s path, as analysts struggled to process the true meaning of the good and bad earning news.

There were a number of very important points that were revealed in the recent BlackBerry announcements.

While the sales from the company’s fourth quarter had plummeted by 32 percent when compared to the same quarter the year before, reaching only $660 million (even managing to miss the lowest estimates of $783.1 million for that quarter), there were areas in which the company still did very well. For instance, it sold massive sale of patents and took in a tax recovery of $29 million which boosted the company into an adjusted profit position. In fact, its profit was a boost of $0.04 per share. This represented the second consecutive quarter in which it managed to beat its bottom line after having undergone six painful quarterly losses in a row.

Chen was very positive and spoke to shareholders and analysts during his BlackBerry earnings call, saying that after the company had struggled to the point of nearly drowning, its “financial house is in order”. He also pointed out that the changes that he has made since he took the head position of the company have now started to bear fruit.