BlackBerry: On Misleading Positives

Summary

• We already knew Blackberry's quarter was disastrous, and showed its remaining businesses are neither growing much, nor profitable.
• Still, Blackberry supporters tried to see the silver lining.
• The silver lining they found, though, is misleading.

There's a silver lining in there somewhere

After BlackBerry reported its disastrous Q1 FY2018 quarter, a few hardened supporters (I, II) came out of the woodwork to see the silver lining in the midst of the stormy clouds.

It was not easy to find good with the quarter, given that BlackBerry’s revenues came in 7.5% below expectations, and the miss was mostly attributable to its “remaining businesses” (software & services). The miss was such that these “remaining businesses”, which were hoped to propel BlackBerry forward once hardware and SAF revenues are entirely gone, grew just 1.8% in the aggregate. Still, they tried.

Their positive arguments mostly fell on 3 vectors:

• That gross margin and operating margin show some kind of uptrend.
• That billings supposedly grew with 3,000 customer orders.
• And that QNX shows promise with Qualcomm (QCOM) and Nvidia (NVDA) “wins”.

As we will see, there are large problems with each of these vectors. Let’s see what they are.

Gross Margin And Operating Margin On An Uptrend

As with many other stocks, when nothing else works speculators turn to “gross margins” to try and justify why they like some business. Except on the very worst of circumstances, gross margins are usually positive.

For sure, BlackBerry’s gross margins are now increasing. This is happening because hardware is being phased out, and hardware never has the same kind of gross margins as software does. The main reason for this is that all those bodies producing the software are accounted for below cost of sales. That is, the marginal cost to deliver one more copy of any given software (its cost of sales) is minimal versus the cost of producing and maintaining such software. As a result, gross margins on software tend to be high.

But, as we can see from BlackBerry’s Q4 FY2017 earnings*, having high gross margins on software is not the same as having similarly large operating margins on software:

Notice:

• The software segment had 79.5% gross margins. As this segment increases its weight on the revenue mix (because of the implosion of the legacy businesses), naturally gross margins will head higher.
• However, operating margin is “just” 25.9%. And, before you go and celebrate this fantastic margin remember: this is before corporate overhead. On that same quarter, corporate overhead was $83 million, which compares to this segment operating margin of $43 million.

Now, there is one instance where very high gross margins can indeed have value: that’s when the cake is growing very quickly. But again, remember, software and services grew just 1.8% year-on-year during Q1 FY2018. It’s not growing quickly, and that’s why it was so bad.

As for operating margins, I’d just recommend understanding the charts before copying and pasting them. The chart used, depicting the upward trend in operating margins:

• Is GAAP, so it includes all kinds of charges BlackBerry took during its market share plunge. This created an incredible low for operating margins (more than 100% negative margins), from which an uptrend would always emerge.
• Is GAAP, so the recent improvement above zero includes the Qualcomm lawsuit settlement.

In other words: the uptrend is meaningless and distorted. All that matters is where it will stabilize. And where will it stabilize? If you’re using GAAP numbers, it will stabilize below zero. If you’re using non-GAAP, you can look to FY2019 EPS consensus. It now sits at $0.06 – and by then there shouldn’t be any hardware or SAF revenues, so that’s what the remaining business will be “earning”, non-GAAP.

Now, do you feel the +1.8% year-on-year growth on that remaining business is somehow worth a 160x price/earnings 2 years down the road? Is that cheap for you? Are the bears irrational to think that might be a bit stretched?

Billings Grew With 3,000 Customer Orders

This one is funny. From BlackBerry's Q1 FY2018:

The growth was due to strong uptake of our new UEM platform, which was launched in December of '16. We processed over - in the quarter, we processed over 3,000 customers orders.

Leaving aside that there was a new product launched recently – which tends to inflate near-term orders - how did this same thing look one year earlier? It looked like this:

BlackBerry had approximately 3,300 enterprise customer wins in the quarter.

So 3,300 went to 3,000. That’s quite the growth there. It's still possible to have growth in value terms, and BlackBerry did report GAAP growth. However, unfortunately, BlackBerry has always been pushing non-GAAP revenue numbers as being more relevant. And there, software actually shrank.

QNX Shows Promise With Qualcomm And Nvidia “Wins”

Here, the blame can be put squarely on BlackBerry, but its supporters are also somewhat guilty of not digging deeper. In both the Q1 FY2018 earnings report and its earnings call BlackBerry said the following (bold is mine):

“In Q1, we made great progress strengthening our strategic position in emerging growth markets, most notably in cybersecurity and the Enterprise of Things,” said John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry. “We secured key design wins in high growth segments of automotive technology, including advanced driver assist, digital instrument cluster and our hypervisor solution. Our ecosystem is growing with Qualcomm and NVIDIA adopting BlackBerry technology for their automotive platforms. Furthermore, we have been recognized once again as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant on the strength of our BlackBerry Secure platform.”

…

We had two significant wins in the quarter. Qualcomm announced that it is adopting our Hypervisor in support of its digital cockpit solution in automotive. The second is Nvidia, who announced the usage of QNX real-time operating system on its DrivePX2 platform. QNX was chosen based on the performance and safety benefits.

Well, perhaps this is the result of BlackBerry’s CEO being mystified by the "cryptography" word (one wonders about his grip on the rest of the technology he manages). Or perhaps that has more to do with him seeing so many news about Bitcoin and wanting to hitch the wagon to it. However, those 2 “wins” above are massively misleading. No, neither Nvidia nor Qualcomm are somehow being won over by QNX. Instead, what happens is:

Nvidia

Nvidia’s DriveWorks and Drive PX2 run on QNX, just as they run on Linux or Android, and just as Drive PX already did. Indeed, when Drive PX2 was unveiled it was shown on Ubuntu (Linux). Obviously, with QNX being a large player on the automotive arena, nothing else would be expected. The surprise here would be if that were no longer the case.

Qualcomm

QNX runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820A SoC, which is geared towards automotive applications. But that isn’t some kind of win, either. Lots of different OSs will run on the Snapdragon 820A. For instance:

• Here we have Qualcomm’s relevant webpage saying its solution provide multi-OS support:

• And here we have the first announcement using the Snapdragon 820A. It’s by Panasonic and Qualcomm. It shows Panasonic will be using the Snapdragon 820A running Android for its next generation infotainment systems.

Furthermore, some of these BlackBerry supporters are mystified by BlackBerry’s Hypervisor 2.0, and how it can compartmentalize different OSs and applications running on the same CPU.

Again, a Hypervisor is not something new – it’s just a virtual machine monitor, a software/hardware application built to run virtual machines. It’s not a BlackBerry exclusive. And indeed, when hiring software engineers Qualcomm doesn’t even give BlackBerry some kind of prominence. For instance, here Qualcomm asks for engineers “Experienced with virtualization technologies for ARM like KVM/XEN/QEMU etc.”. KVM/ARM is perhaps the leading Linux ARM Hypervisor.

An Odd Moment

One of the BlackBerry bulls, perhaps filled with hubris, had this to say:

The reality of it is, I am not surprised. I firmly believe the majority of the people who cover the stock, be it analysts who cover multiple securities or the various writers in the media, have neither the time to adequately research the company nor the will to research the products for themselves through using them.

Leaving aside the arguments I already handled above, which shows who’s side the knowledge is on, I should also add that the same BlackBerry bull also said this:

For all of the good, the revenue figures were below the $240 million or so that the street expected and thus the stock took a hit.

Well, if you think you know more about the company than the others, then it’s better to show that you know the numbers better as well. The revenue expectation was for $264 million, not $240 million. If it were $240 million, revenue would have come in above expectations.

And this …

More importantly, at today's $10.00 per share price, the $2.6 billion in cash equivalents position is more than 50% of the market cap. What this implies to me is that the market has failed to price in the true value of the patents and IP portfolio and is overly pessimistic on growth.

Cash as a percentage of market capitalization is an irrelevant metric. Net cash needs to be used. Net cash is $1.9 billion, and thus constitutes 35.2% of market capitalization, not more than 50%.

Conclusion

The conclusion here is simple: many of the threads BlackBerry supporters are hanging on to are feeble and cannot possibly justify BlackBerry’s value.

The bearish thesis remains the same:

• The BlackBerry of today is a collection of small, stagnated and unprofitable businesses, trading for 160x earnings 2 years down the road.

Analyst’s Disclosure: I am/we are short BBRY. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Comments

[JoSam]

All of you haters please approach venture capitalists & show your talents. Get them invest for your new companies and prove the world of your wisdom. Why wasting time here by cherry picking?.

[David653]

Antin, re, "why wasting time here..." good idea ill just write a check to have infrastructure set up, with a team of hardware and software engineers and pay them of course during the development stage. I'm sure the cost of that would be cheap.

[montecristo10001]

"... I'm sure the cost of that would be cheap."

It would seem you are beating your head against a brick wall with BBRY. Ever hear of venture capitalists? You peddle an idea to them and if it is worthy, they give you money for a piece of the action.

[David653]

montecri, Re, "You peddle an idea to them and if it is worthy, they give you money for a piece of the action." NO! I require BlackBerry's infrastructure to complete. Chen is preventing this from happening, due to his statement he said publicly "No Stardom Please" That statement alone put a halt to any innovation coming out of BlackBerry. The spark (seed) of a idea comes from one mind as a rule "the star" where as then the whole team focuses on it.

[JoSam]

Why wasting time here instead of setting up your own companies & make it shines forever.

[Trending Value]

PRTY - that's one. It's deteriorating fundamentally and the trend is clearly down.

FRSH - that's two. However, the price is lingering near a strong support level at $4. Once it breaks, short it. The P/E ratio is still in the 20's even though revenue has been declining for some time. It's a busted business model.

BBRY??? A pile of cash. It's cashflow is flat. The patents are an unknown (up or down). Licensing deals are an unknown (up or down) as portrayed in the recent award. And it's still got the backing of prominent investors. Nasty negative asymmetry.

[Paulo Santos]

PRTY is 3x larger than BBRY's remaining business, is profitable, might be challenged but still growing more than BBRY, and is worth a fraction of BBRY ...

BBRY's recent lawsuit gains were not because of it licensing anything, btw. It was because it PAID excess royalties to QCOM.

[Denis III]

PRTY is small caps and so harder to find stock to short, same with FRSH.

BBRY, no problem plus those are US therefore easier access to capital.
BBRY has this ridiculous 50-60% run and cannot hold 10$. The others are in a trading range.

Actually SNAP and APRN are the worse sounding IPO that I can remember and made good money shorting SNAP from 20ish to 18 and then kept going. On dead cat bounces, these would be better shorts than BBRY but not now.

[Trending Value]

Paulo,

I understand about the QCOM deal. It was a misstatement in my post.

Profitability doesn't matter in the stock market. What matters is people's expectations of the future. PRTY is expected to decline because of new entrants and no moat, coupled with a high P/E. Since it is not tech there is less uncertainty of this deterioration.

BBRY has a high P/E. True. But there is a floor due to the cash per share. And there is a glimmer of "hope" with the technology. It's true that you are not optimistic, but others are.

I think our differences as short sellers is in how much we weigh fundamentals versus trends and market psychology. You're more of a fundamentals guy. You're a good analyst and I respect your articles. Sometimes I listen to you and copy. But I do often ignore you when your articles are advising counter-trend speculations.

[Bearvsbull4ever]

Short Blackberry!!! The can't lose trade is on!! Everyone should short it.

[Paulo Santos]

The shorts are going to get a surprise on this no-growth no-profits company that trades for 140x FY2019 earnings! That will teach them not to short sell bargains which have long turned around!

[Trending Value]

Paulo,

I agree with your article. But as you know, I don't want to short BBRY. With the cash balance, you've got 50% downside at best. Is that worth it?

[Paulo Santos]

The downside was severely reduced by the $1 billion receipt from QCOM, yes.

[ECG Management]

Paul,

BBRY ran from 7.00-11.75 - what you're seeing is a typical normal pullback after such a huge run. The qtr wasn't worthy of a 11.75 stock, but the buyback, the cash hoard and the opportunities that exist make this pullback a great opportunity rebuild. I[m waiting for 9.00-8.25 but i doubt we get it.

I basically disagree with your argument.

[Paulo Santos]

The thesis is playing out just like I said. BBRY is a collection of small businesses which are growing slowly, aren't profitable, and trade at massive non-GAAP multiples 2 years into the future.

There isn't much to disagree with, these are all facts.

[EmotionlessInvest]

In 2013 BB went from under $6 to over $10 then down to 9's then in 2014 to mid 11's then back to 9's then up to high 10's. In 2015 up to high 9's and then down to low 6's.
This appears to be pattern where BB runs up on press releases, buyout rumors, Chens hollow never to be fulfilled promises and the like then reality once again sets in and the stock always falls back close to lows.
And always there are folks posting they would buy more if it falls back to 7's or 8's but they don't think it will..but it always does.

[David653]

Bestr, is it about time for BlackBerry to start a buyout rumor? So they can make a statement "we don't comment on rumors, so they don't appear to be guilty of starting it.

[David653]

Paul S, Re, "Well, management needs to be congratulated because it got BBRY a massive growth tech multiple on no growth or earnings." Well I hope now that public investors realize due to misleading positives that this SP may and probably will return to its low of below $7. WOW Prem Watsa must be pulling his hair out over this major mistake. Who wants to bet that if this stock gets even close to $15, FFH (Prem Watsa) will pull the plug. Can anyone tell me that if in the event that FFH sold it's entire stake in BlackBerry what would the SP then be worth?

[Paulo Santos]

I also think that if the share price hadn't gone up, this management team would already be a goner. Just looking at the attainment of objectives shows that.

[David653]

Paulo S, Re, "I also think that if the share price hadn't gone up, this management team would already be a goner." I think the misleading positives were set up to offset the negative, due to BlackBerry being aware ahead of time of Toyota's departure of QNX.

[F Maz]

The problem with stocks like this one is that often, the more positively opinionated investors are the one with the less qualifications. But specialized softwares are purchased by knowledgable clients. Those clients usually care about buying the best product for their corporate needs, not the coolest one. That is why, a few years back, big corporations would buy BBRY for its server-related safety and not cool (but decentralized) IPhones.

Everytime I read about "the new" BBRY, I find no revolutionary ideas or relevant features... just reblends of existing ideas.

Personnally, I view BBRY as one of those Chinese company making cheap knockoffs of premium brand products. Except they're not exactly cheap either.

my prediction; BBRY will crash then be taken over.

[sfinvestor]

"The problem with stocks like this one is that often, the more positively opinionated investors are the one with the less qualifications"

Actually the problem with retail investor is they take management talking point and just repeat the positives. Radar got fed, ex, orgasm time. (We all know radar is DOA)

* Management says hardware selling well, (and doesn't)
* Management says EZ pass program doing great (and doesn't)
* Management says more professional services when we all know it's just a one time Ford consulting gig
* Management says Hardware licensing is all margins, except its all margins on essentially nothing.
the list goes on and on...

IMO, BBRY management is the most pathetic type. They fed so much BS the last 5 years, shareholders puke.

[Paulo Santos]

Well, management needs to be congratulated because it got BBRY a massive growth tech multiple on no growth or earnings.

[David653]

FMaz, re: "Personnally, I view BBRY as one of those Chinese company making cheap knockoffs of premium brand products. Except they're not exactly cheap either.
my prediction; BBRY will crash then be taken over." If BlackBerry is taken over it will be for far less than the last asking price of $4.7B. I am sorry but Chen has made this company worth less then when he took over.

[EmotionlessInvest]

It was a "disastrous" quarter and if they have another one I see the stock going back to the $7-$8 range.
<>
Something else: BBRY must deal with major reductions in its legacy businesses. During the latest quarter , the handheld devices business plunged by 75% to $37 million and the Service Access Fees segment dropped by 64% to $38 million. The Technology Solutions category also flat-lined (this includes the QNX auto technology).

Bottom Line On BBRY Stock
To make up for the shortfall in the legacy businesses, BBRY is relying on the enterprise software business, of course. But the problem is that the growth there is likely to remain modest. For the latest quarter , revenue fell from $106 million to $101 million and the orders fell 14%, to 3,000 compared with Q4's 3,500.

And yes, BlackBerry stock is not cheap, with the shares are trading at about 45 times earnings. This is fairly steep for a company with sluggish growth and in the midst of a major business turnaround. For serious investors, it's probably best to hold off for now on BBRY stock.

http://bit.ly/2uNSMTs

BB has major competition in software with well known names that have better and broader offerings.
In the auto tech business they are competing with the likes of Google, Tesla, Apple, Intel and other big name deep pocketed companies who have stellar reputations.

These are a few of the reasons this most likely won't be a truly successful turn around for Chen. 20 years ago he made a great bet on wireless when it was in its infancy. This was why he had success at Sybase. Times have changed (passed Chen by?) and there are zero similarities between what he did at Sybase and what he is attempting to do at Blackberry.
Zero.

[ttbjammn]

Buy BB hand over fist...

[Denis III]

and lose money, hand over fist.

[sfinvestor]

"•We already knew Blackberry's quarter was disastrous"

FY18Q1 was indeed a disaster. In fact, all of FY17 was as well.

The only way to measure result is not from management talking point, but by achievement.
Here is the real report card. Page 31 http://blck.by/2uLXykz

Company revenue - 63% achieved
EPS - 22% lol
FFC - 0% lol
Enterprise/BBM - 96%
AtHoc/Securesmart 17%
Enterprise revenue - 94% (missed their baseline mostly Enterprise driven)
Corporate Objectives 0%

The BOD deemed BBRY management to have met 0% of corporate objectives. I don't know why BBRY shareholders get such an orgasm with JC and gang. They have been "F" for the entire decade. Look at the report card yourself. No raise, no bonus, that tells you all you need to know about how BOD feels about the loser team.

[snu-snu]

And yet they are re-elected for new term.

Looks like someone here is stupid. And I am almost sure that this is not main shareholders

[sanityininsanity]

No we dont know, dont state your opinion as a fact

[sfinvestor]

"The BOD deemed BBRY management to have met 0% of corporate objectives"

That is fact. Page 31

[sanityininsanity]

Where are the haters and bears who said BBRY will be out of business by now?

[Paulo Santos]

Well, BBRY is out of the entire business which made it Blackberry.

Going BK it was never going to, because of the cash.

[Denis III]

Paulo

Yes but I believe there will be no point to the business and the $$$/remaining employees will be distributed to the marketplace ($$$ to Prem and employees to better companies/UI).

My thesis and sticking to it. BK is not the only solution.

[sanityininsanity]

Not true, remaining in hardware would have caused bankruptcy. See how bears and haters change their tunes. So many of bears and haters said BBRY will be bankrupt. Now solid balance sheet, no cash burn, and high margin software revenues will propel this stock to over $40

[kboyes]

Paulo, you keep bringing up the meaningless metric of P/E that several people have pointed out doesn't make sense in a case like this where their profits are basically zero. Would you value a company with $100 B in assets and no earnings at zero? That makes about the same amount of sense as using P/E to value BB.

But since you insist on using P/E, why does Morningstar list Blackberry's forward P/E at 97.2? And you're saying 2 years from now it will be 160? Projecting Morningstar's numbers 2 years into the future, assuming BB can improve their profitability by nominal amounts, it should bring the P/E down to normal levels.

[Paulo Santos]

P/E is not meaningless if you look at it TWO YEARS into the future. By then, all you have is the "remaining businesses" -- you no longer have hardware or SAF revenues.

So, in 2 years' time, you have BBRY's profitability and growth from those businesses. You're paying 160x for that profitability, even as those remaining businesses hardly grow. I am using the present consensus for FY2019, which is $0.06 (Yahoo Finance, which I think is Factset or IBES or whatever). But it could be $0.07 or $0.08 or even $0.09, neither would make sense. This is a non-GAAP EPS, btw, and non-GAAP in Blackberry is highly suspicious plus SBC (stock based compensation) is massive as a percentage of revenue.

The consensus estimates already expect BBRY to improve profitability a lot. The reason is that SAF revenues are going away and you can't keep on ignoring RAP and acquisition charges forever, so those have to be substituted by actual earnings. In all likelihood, BBRY will have trouble meeting longer-term EPS expectations without more non-GAAP shenanigans.

---------

With the possible exception of IP, BBRY doesn't have much in the way of assets, and trades at ~3.2x price/tangible book.

[kboyes]

And your growth forecast for EMM, for example, where BB is an acknowledged leader, and a market that is forecast to grow at 25% per year, is that not only will BB not keep up with the market growth but it will lag the market by 25% per year so that it nets no growth at all in that space?

Similarly for QNX where it is the dominant market leader in a space that will probably grow by more than EMM? The market will grow by 30% but the market leader will have no growth?

[syloblackb]

You could make the same arguments 2 quarters ago. Yet, sp almost doubled since and is now at about 1.5x. Why, because it's about the potential BlackBerry has and you continuously seem to miss the point. Until when are you short?

[easyandsimple]

Paulo

Your assumption that BBRY cannot propel its growth despite many clearly positive indicators reminds me of your earlier short calls on AMZN. When AMZN was at ~$300 you've presented a short thesis in a number of your SA articles, arguing that the stock was overvalued, citing a bubble valuation, ~1000 PE, impossible growth projections, etc. Based on your analysis, your price target for AMZN at that time was below $100. You argued with passion and conviction your short call in the countless articles and commentaries.

3-4 years fast forward and today AMZN is almost at $1000. You were wrong. AMZN is today more than 10 times your price target. Those who trusted you (hopefully few) including yourself probably lost their shirts.

Everyone can make a wrong call in the market and miss it 30-50% but your 10X+ miss is not something we see every day. You seem to be somewhat knowledgeable about investing, and perhaps that fed your overconfidence which turned into persistence and denial. In retrospect, obviously it was a formula for disaster with catastrophic results. Hopefully some lessons have been learned so that the same doesn't repeat.

What would make you change your BBRY call from short to long?

[Paulo Santos]

I've left AMZN more than 2 years ago. I've written on countless stocks besides AMZN. BBRY is no AMZN, and isn't growing like AMZN was.

It would be nearly impossible for me to change my mind from short to llong on BBRY -- or, generically, on nearly any name. The reason is that I base myself on fundamentals and valuation, and both shorts and longs have a margin of safety there. So, for a stock to go from long to short or vice-versa it would have to overcome TWO margins of safety.

Really, what makes you be positive on BBRY beyond the name, which is meaningless since Blackberry doesn't sell to the consumer any more? I mean, this is a low growth, no profitability, collection of small businesses having less than $700 million in revenues strung together, yet trading for a massive valuation -- including 160x earnings TWO years into the future (that's at least TEN times the market multiple, right there).

[easyandsimple]

Paulo

You are doing a pretty good 'static' analysis of the state of the business and that is certainly a good contribution. You do point to some facts that should be taken into account when investing in BBRY or any other company.

When I mentioned AMZN, by no means did I want to compare it to BBRY. The point was to highlight the obvious shortcomings in your analysis, specifically conclusions. You produced lots of valuable articles with a solid and accurate analysis of AMZN yet you failed miserably in evaluating future company prospects. You see the point? Great analysis, poor conclusion. And you couldn’t let it go. The irony was that your strength became your weakness so you ended up in denial. What did you learn from your AMZN case that you could apply in your next analysis? What was missing there?

BBRY is making major transition in its market positioning, product portfolio in order to set itself up for future potential growth. It is not just a plan, but some major financial and operational milestones have been achieved so clearly there is a progress. How well and fast they can execute remains to be seen but assigning minimum growth potential to any of new streams of businesses doesn’t seem reasonable.

[Paulo Santos]

The BBRY transition is evident to everyone. When I talk BBRY, I talk only about the REMAINING BUSINESSES. I am fully ignoring the hardware and SAF implosions. Also, when we talk earnings, we're talking 2 years out, so there will only be the remaining businesses, then.

----------

What was missing on AMZN was rather simple: the market did not take the stock lower when AMZN UNPEXPECTEDLY lost all earnings over a 4-5 year period (against expectations of ever higher profits). If you could repeat what happened for 100 stocks under similar conditions (high valuations, lost all earnings unexpectedly), likely 98-99 would have fallen.

Other than that, AMZN had a decent business, which only went into negative FCF briefly. Also, AWS surprised everybody in terms of profitability (and here I was actually one of the least surprised, as my models always had it as profitable -- just not AS profitable as it turned out to be).

[ThayJeff]

Trying to stay neutral here, but you don't do your analysis any favors by using such biased and loaded terms as "disastrous" & "feeble" while spending a paragraph insulting John Chen and expecting readers to come away with anything except a short investor looking for justification in his position.

I might point out that the Seeking Alpha website just yesterday had a contributor with a bullish analysis of BB:

https://seekingalpha.c....

So you can't act "mystified" (your own words) when there are others that disagree with your outlook and happen to see a rosier picture for Blackberry.

[Paulo Santos]

This is a company trading for 160x earnings TWO years down the road.

What it reported was nearly no growth for the remaining businesses.

"Disastrous" is me being kind.

People don't disagree with my outlook. They don't have another outlook. They buy because it's "Blackberry".

-----

The article you link to is one of two I mention in my article. It's an article that doesn't even get the revenue right and which points to stuff that I show to be false, in this article. And explain why.

[EmotionlessInvest]

ThayJeff the article you linked to is by an author who has been bullish for over 3 years, owns the stock and began writing when the stock was at a higher price point than current.
In essence dead money for 3 years while the market rocketed up and up.
Not exactly a great example.
Once upon a time when Chen took over there were 2 to 3 bullish articles per week and few bearish ones. Many of those bullish authors are gone while most of the bearish authors are still here at SA.

[wiesje]

BBRY has been a very bad investment for Prem Watsa and his loyal sponsors in Fairfax, besides damaging his reputation as a Fund Manager, it is also hurting his performance , now finally BBRY is no longer out of control, it may not be profitable as yet, but the bleeding has stopped, they are taking no risks and have cleaned the company

they will make it work and get the share price substantially higher, or they will break-up the company and sell-out, but the one thing they will not allow is the company to slip again and evaporate yet again.

so, although you may see no future in BBRY's business model and may find the stock totally over-priced, you state that you see no value in this company at 150 x forward earnings and as such will remain short the stock, but that's not what this is about, you are short a company owned by a bunch of very rich individuals and they have been hurting and now they finally see a way out, that's why this stock is a long play on dips rather than a short play on rallies, they will get 15 to 20$ one way or another and walk away, or as said they will make it work.
failing again is not an option.
Long BBRY waiting for 15$

[Paulo Santos]

Businesses don't start working out of wishful thinking, though. Customers have to buy. And here what you see is that customers aren't buying. The growth isn't there, the profits aren't there, and the massive valuation IS there.

This is a collection of small businesses making less than $700 million in revenues per year (the ones which will remain), not growing and not profitable -- trading for a massive valuation.

[trader trader]

I found this article to be incomplete and inaccurate. They just won $940 million dollars from Qulacomm this quarter. This amounts to almost 20% of their market cap. Where was this mentioned in your article? If this is "disastrous" as you say, I hope Blackberry has many, many more disastrous quarters. This win shows that they are successful in the courtroom, an area you never address. They also had a favorable ruling in the Avaya case. This could bold well for future litigation. The FedEx win was another big potential plus. They did not lower their earnings projections for the year and beat on earnings. You will never see the good in anything if you always interpret everything negatively.

As far as radar goes, I have a friend in the trucking business would showed me a product he is using to track his trucks. He can watch his trucks in real time on his cell phone with much information on each truck (location, speed, etc) He thinks it is a huge benefit to his business. I would like to know how radar compares to other products on the market now. I saw someone on seeking alpha mention some differences and some of the advantages of radar somewhere. My conversation with my friend leads me to believe that the product is useful and could be a good growth area. I believe the pays $30 a month for the service. I think Blackberry could have an advantage in military applications where security is a must.

Another flaw in your valuation analysis is the unknown. There are many things that can happen that will make the stock go up much higher than where it is now. These factors include patent and other litigation, a takeover, a wise use of their cash and potential mergers and partnerships, and potential new products. I believe the potential for reward greatly outweighs the downside. They have plenty of cash and are not going away any time soon.

[Paulo Santos]

The award is in the price and everything that's said about the company. And it was written about in a previus article too.

"As far as radar goes, I have a friend in the trucking business would showed me a product he is using to track his trucks. He can watch his trucks in real time on his cell phone with much information on each truck (location, speed, etc) He thinks it is a huge benefit to his business"

Yep, your friend showed you a competing product.

"Another flaw in your valuation analysis is the unknown. There are many things that can happen that will make the stock go up much higher than where it is now. "

It's all about the odds. What do you think the odds are on a company showing no growth, no profits, and trading for 160x earnings 2 years down the road?

Of course a lot of things can happen -- not all of them favorable, man.

[KIA Investment Research]

Paulo,

with blackberry, it's never about the way things are, it's about what they could be.

[Paulo Santos]

"Paulo,
with blackberry, it's never about the way things are, it's about what they could be."

I know. BBRY could be the next MSFT! The next AMZN! The next AAPL! The next "all of them put together"!

[Pier-David Morel]

'We already knew Blackberry's quarter was disastrous'. Mr. Santos, please do not exxagerate in your interpretation of bbry financial report. A little short would best describe last quarter. Disastrous is really not the word to use here. Drama-like attitude is not good when it comes to investing.

[Paulo Santos]

Unreal. This thing goes for 160x earnings 2 years down the road and this guy somehow thinks what the company reported was not disastrous.

[syloblackb]

Going back 2 years distorts the reality... Need some Black(Berry) coffee to wake up?

[Paulo Santos]

We're not going back 2 years. We are looking FORWARD two years. This trades at 160x earnings consensus 2 years FORWARD. And it's not growing.

Plus that's a kind of fake non-GAAP consensus, too.

[GHOSTRlDER]

Paulie,

....so when did BlackBerry die or when is it going to die? I'm so confused. -GR

[Paulo Santos]

Do you think companies need to die, so as not to be worth $5.4 billion, is it?

[GHOSTRlDER]

Ok so a potentially inflated valuation. Not a rare occurrence in the stock market. Meanwhile the numbers (albeit low) support Chen's vision. Is that worthy of a nuclear bomb picture at this stage? Your whole article appears to be written with rage and hard to read in a rational voice. Are you simply mad that BBRY continues to exist? Why are you so mad? Thus my complete confusion on taking you seriously.