I cannot remember the last time a friend or colleague chose to go with a BlackBerry. It seems I am not alone. Blackberry has just released a fairly calamitous set of results for the first quarter. On an underlying basis, BlackBerry posted a loss of $67m; analysts had forecast a small profit and revenue of $3.4bn.
What is really surprising is that BlackBerry does not seem to have reported how many of its BB10 units it sold in the first quarter. That rather begs the question: do they not know the answer or is the figure so dire they want to keep quiet about it. On a very quick straw poll around the office, I found one brave soul prepared to admit that he had considered buying the latest BlackBerry.
One. Out of more than 20 people.
There was a time, not so long ago, when BlackBerry had its own little group of loyal fans, ever-eager to highlight the alleged attractions of the Blackberry when compared to Apple’s iPhone and the various Android devices. According to the firm, BlackBerry’s most recently launched devices were designed to bring back loyal customers to the fold. That project seems to be failing.
Except we do not know exactly the extent of the failure until and unless BlackBerry own up to the number of units sold in the first quarter. BlackBerry said that it sold 6.8m handsets in the quarter, up 13 per cent from the last quarter of 2012 – but gave no hint about how many of the 6.8 million phones were BB10 devices. Analyst forecasts suggested that BlackBerry would sell 7.5 million units in total in the quarter. So a big miss. The earnings got worse – or funnier – depending on your point of view. BlackBerry declined to predict how many handsets it will sell in the remainder of 2013.
It really is quite a fall from grace. BlackBerry was the original smartphone, predating the iPhone and winning plaudits long before Samsung Galaxy’s dominated the Android sales charts. The Q10 handset was released in March to generally favourable reviews from the tech geeks.
It is not cheap. This morning, Amazon had nine available for sale, at £480 each. For that sort of money, one can buy the most recent Galaxy S4 (£465) or the iPhone 5 (£470). The market viewed BlackBerry’s results with horror this morning: at one stage in pre-market trading, the stock was down 24 per cent. The price recovered a little to be down a mere 16 per cent when trading commenced.
So what next for BlackBerry? Only two weeks ago, Societe Generale sent out a note to clients upgrading its rating on BlackBerry to Buy. The fourth-largest US bank, Wells-Fargo issued an upbeat assessment for BlackBerry as recently as 14 June. Not every analyst is negative regarding BlackBerry by any means and the stock price is certainly volatile.
It kicked off 2013 with a share price of CS11.60; despite todays bad news, the share price is up more than 25 per cent for the year to date at C$15 but well down on its year-high price of C$18. No doubt there will be scribblers out there rushing to suggest that BlackBerry is the next Palm and that BlackBerry’s days are numbered. BlackBerry is no palm; not yet anyway.
Its cash position is strong. It has over £7bn in assets compared with les than $4bn in total liabilities. But it needs to give the market a little more guidance on how the latest device is selling. And it really could do with a strong second quarter.
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