Blackberry (formerly "Research In Motion")

https://blackberry.secure.force.com/ezpa...Channel%7C

John Chen twice added to his sizeable holding in BlackBerry.

As the CEO he is entitled to 13 million in restricted share units (RSUs) which vest over 5 years and motivate him to earn his keep. It is interesting that he will take what salary he is paid now and plow it back into the company he is working for.

Canadian Insider has twice reported his purchases of BlackBerry stock on the open market.

On January 13, it was 25,000 shares @ $8.25 per share.

On April 7, yet another 25,000 shares @ $8.00 per share.

Article seeking alpha

http://crackberry.com/pre-orders-blackbe...indonesian

Pre-orders for the BlackBerry Z3 officially open up, limited Jakarta edition available to Indonesian customers

Although it was tipped that pre-orders for the BlackBerry Z3 would be starting soon earlier, the official word on it has been released by BlackBerry and carrier partners and it includes a bit of a surprise as well by way of a limited edition device only available exclusively in Indonesia.

Customers in Indonesia can now pre-order the BlackBerry Z3 smartphone through leading telecommunications operators in Indonesia, Indosat and XL. BlackBerry expects the device to be priced at IDR 2,199,000. The official unveiling of BlackBerry Z3 is scheduled to take place in Jakarta on May 13th, 2014.

BlackBerry also announced today the availability of a limited edition model - the BlackBerry Z3, Jakarta Edition - which will be made available to Indosat and XL customers for a limited period. This model will feature the inscription "Jakarta" on the back of the device to commemorate the launch of the first BlackBerry smartphone built specifically for the Indonesia market.

That pricing works out to be about $190 USD and just under the $200 pricing noted earlier. Plus, through carrier deals and third-party retailers, Indonesian customers could potentially pick up the device for less. You can check out the full press release below and full specs via the BlackBerry website.

Press Release

Pre-order for BlackBerry Z3 Opens in Indonesia
Limited BlackBerry Z3, Jakarta Edition available exclusively to Indonesian customers
JAKARTA, INDONESIA--(Marketwired - April 27, 2014) - BlackBerry (NASDAQ:BBRY)(TSX:BB) today announced that customers in Indonesia can now pre-order the BlackBerry Z3 smartphone through leading telecommunications operators in Indonesia, Indosat and XL. BlackBerry expects the device to be priced at IDR 2,199,000. The official unveiling of BlackBerry Z3 is scheduled to take place in Jakarta on May 13th, 2014. BlackBerry also announced today the availability of a limited edition model - the BlackBerry Z3, Jakarta Edition - which will be made available to Indosat and XL customers for a limited period. This model will feature the inscription "Jakarta" on the back of the device to commemorate the launch of the first BlackBerry smartphone built specifically for the Indonesia market.

Made for the next generation of BlackBerry customers in Indonesia, the stylish new BlackBerry Z3 is customized with local apps and content, features a modern design with a 5" display, long lasting battery and comes with BlackBerry 10 OS version 10.2.1.

Key features include:

BlackBerry® Hub - The ever present BlackBerry Hub lets you access all your work and personal email, BBM™, text messages, social media updates and notifications in one place, with the ability to "peek" into the BlackBerry Hub from anywhere, so you're always only one swipe away from what matters to you. The Hub can be customized to identify priority messages and to filter the message list by various criteria that you can then activate with a simple pinch gesture.

BBM - BBM on the BlackBerry Z3 includes all the latest features of the popular mobile social network, customized for Indonesians. You get BBM voice and video chatting with Screen Share and support for BlackBerry Natural Sound, letting you hear nuances and variations in tone in a BBM Voice chat, and making the conversation sound like you're in the same room. BBM Channels features a variety of Indonesian channels as well as a package of BBM stickers that have been specially designed by an Indonesian artist.

BlackBerry Keyboard - The BlackBerry Keyboard learns what words you use and how you use them, then offers them up to you so you can type faster and more accurately. It gives you the best Bahasa Indonesia typing experience on a touchscreen, complete with multi-language support that lets you type in up to 3 different languages at the same time.

Time Shift & Story Maker - The BlackBerry Z3's astonishing Time Shift camera feature lets you capture a group shot where everyone is smiling with their eyes wide open. You can also use Story Maker to bring a collection of photos and videos together, along with music and effects, to produce an HD movie that you can instantly share on YouTube.

BlackBerry 10 Browser - The BlackBerry 10 browser sets the industry benchmark for HTML5 performance on smartphones, and is incredibly fast, with fluid and responsive scrolling and zooming. The browser includes many advanced features, supports multiple tabs, lets you browse sites privately, includes a reader mode, and integrates with the platform for easily sharing content. You can even save web pages for later viewing.

Instant Previews & Reply Now - Be more timely and responsive with Instant Previews that bring BBM, SMS and email message to you no matter what you are doing on your BlackBerry Z3. You can even reply to your BBM or SMS messages in any app, or swipe to the BlackBerry Hub to respond. If you get a phone call that you can't answer right way, you can instantly silence the call and send a Reply Now response through BBM, SMS or email to let the caller know you're busy.

Fast, Easy Sharing - The BlackBerry Z3 learns how you share and who you share with, helping you reduce the number of steps and amount of time it takes to get your files, photos, or documents to where they need to go. Touching "share" in any app provides suggestions on who and how to share your files based on who you've shared with in the past, and the feature only gets smarter the more you use it.

FM Radio - The new BlackBerry Z3 includes a built-in FM radio. You can listen to local FM stations, which does not require any network connection.
"The BlackBerry Z3 was designed with our Indonesian customers in mind, to keep them productive and connected with family, friends and co-workers while on the move," said John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO at BlackBerry. "Embodying all that BlackBerry 10 offers, the BlackBerry Z3 has a stylish, modern, all-touch design with exceptional productivity features and reliable communications."

Customers may pre-order BlackBerry Z3 from today. Indosat customers should visit www.indosat.com/BBJakarta. XL customers should visit www.xl.co.id/blackberryz3.

For more information about the BlackBerry Z3, please visit www.blackberry.com/blackberryz3.

Update on the real estate disposal of the company...

Spear Street to buy BlackBerry's Canadian real estate assets
06 May 2014 06:20
[TORONTO] BlackBerry disclosed on Monday that US real estate investment company Spear Street Capital is buying the majority of the embattled technology firm's Canadian real estate holdings for C$305 million (US$278 million).

Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry announced in March it had reached an agreement to sell the vast majority of its real estate holdings, as part of a plan outlined earlier this year to strengthen its balance sheet. At the time, BlackBerry did not name the buyer or disclose the terms of the deal.

Spear Street is a boutique real estate investment firm that began operations in 2001. It often focuses on real estate being used by tech firms and its investments have included corporate campuses, single assets, portfolios, as well as partial and full development projects.

Spear Street President John Grassi said the start-up boom around BlackBerry's hometown of Waterloo was a factor in the investment, but other factors were also at play.

"A lot of larger tech companies are looking for talent, and they're going where the talent is," he said. "Not everyone is going to pick up and move to Silicon Valley because it is tough to do and expensive, so a lot of the larger companies are going to where the talent is and that is engineering and university centers, and Waterloo certainly stacks up well in that regard."
...
Source: Business Times Breaking News

BlackBerry CEO Says Tunaround Odds Have Improved to 80-20
By Scott Moritz and Brian Womack May 29, 2014 6:01 AM GMT+0800


BlackBerry Ltd. (BBRY) Chief Executive Officer John Chen said the chances of turning around the struggling smartphone maker have risen to 80-20.

Chen, who was named as BlackBerry’s top executive in November, had previously been placing the recovery odds at 50-50, no better than a coin flip.

“We have a lot of problems, but it’s not dead,” Chen said today at Re/code’s Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. “I am quite positive that we will be able to save the patient.”

Chen has been working to shift the Waterloo, Ontario-based company’s focus from smartphones to mobile data and security services. Since his arrival, BlackBerry has pushed to have a bigger role in connecting everything from heart monitors to automobiles to the Internet as mobile service spreads beyond phones and tablets.

In his first months, Chen has opened BlackBerry’s phone software to rival mobile management systems, partnered with health-care technology developers to connect doctors and medical devices and hired contract manufacturers to make some of its phones in an effort to broaden its options.

BlackBerry introduced Z3, its lower-priced phone, in Indonesia earlier this month and later this year the company plans to start selling Classic, a combined touchscreen and physical keyboard phone that resembles some of its original Bold models. The company also has a new BlackBerry Enterprise Server 12 that it has said it will start selling in November.

Smartphone Decline

Chen said in an April interview that he’s giving the company six to eight quarters to replace declining hardware sales with higher-margin software revenue.

BlackBerry’s share of the smartphone market is quickly vanishing. The company’s global shipments are projected to fall almost 50 percent this year to about 9.7 million smartphones, according to a new forecast today from research firm IDC.

BlackBerry’s worldwide market share will slide to 0.8 percent in 2014 and may slip to 0.3 percent by 2018, IDC said. The company’s operating system accounted for 1.9 percent of the market in 2013. As recently as late 2010, its global market share was 19 percent.

Executive Column: BlackBerry wants to get back on track

Khoirul Amin
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | June 09 2014 | 11:27 AM

Canadian cell phone maker BlackBerry, which has lost its market share in the country’s phone market, has recently released a low-cost touchscreen device, the Z3 “Jakarta edition”, to win back Indonesian consumers from iPhone and Android-based rivals. During a recent visit to Indonesia, BlackBerry CEO John Chen a telecommunication industry veteran and former Sybase CEO spoke to The Jakarta Post’s Khoirul Amin about his strategy to turn the luck of his company around. Below are excerpts of the interview:

Question: BlackBerry has lost half of its staff with its market share falling all over the world. How will you bring the company back to life?

Answer: I came in here for a turnaround and I hope that everybody knows what we are doing is focusing on bringing new products into new markets or existing markets, bringing innovation, focusing on doing the work for increasing market share, getting the company back on track.

What I am not focusing on is failure. I think the company is in a much better position today. Has everything been fixed? No. I am still working on that, but I think we have made tremendous progress in the last six months.

I am focusing on new products, in devices, like you saw in the Z3, that are more focused on the consumer space. We [also] have a lot of products in the enterprise spaces coming out […].We are looking at releasing our new enterprise offer […]. We have now set up BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) for enterprises called e-BBM, starting in June this year. So, there are a lot of good things and we are doing a lot more on QNX, our better microkernel operating system. We are doing a lot of things, but the whole idea for BlackBerry in the future is we will build infrastructure that connects everything: mobile, Internet protocol [IP] addresses, everything.

BlackBerry suffered US$423 million in losses in the first three months of this year. How will you turn that situation around?

I said we are going to turn cash flow neutral or positive by the end of our fiscal year. When I came in my first quarter, we used $1.1 billion in cash. That is huge. Last quarter we used $775 million in cash. So, I said by the end of the fiscal year we will be breaking even on cash flow or making, generating cash. To me, that is the first sign of stability.

It will be from phone, server, QNX, e-BBM, there will be a lot of things. We will control costs and expenses, we will be having an arrangement with Foxconn. Then a year later, sometime in the next fiscal year, we will be profitable. That’s what we said.

How do you transfer that positive energy to your subordinates so that they have a similar vision and energy?

First of all, I have made a lot of changes to the management team and we will continue to make changes to bring in more energy. But there are a lot of BlackBerry employees that have gone through a lot in the last two years and are looking for that energy. We have a lot of good people in the company. I have brought some changes in leadership, probably not because they are not good leaders but we cannot think alike and I cannot afford the time.

We do not have much time. I know that there is no time to debate it and this is the only way to turn the company around […] we have to focus on execution. But I think that a lot of people in the company that have that energy.

If you look at what we have done as a company in the last four months, we were able to put [the Z3] together and launch it in a foreign country [Indonesia].

I am very pleased that we can execute it. We had a couple of issues that we had to resolve in the last four months, some are products, some of them are processes, but both our sales team and Foxconn’s team overcame them. We worked through Christmas and New Year, which are important for people in the US and Canada, and we worked through the Chinese New Year, which is important for the Taiwanese and Chinese. When the world talks about negative things, let us talk about positive things.

You have just launched the Z3 in Jakarta. Why Jakarta and how important is Indonesia for your company?

It is my recognition and my statement that customers are important to us and that Jakarta has a lot of customers, Indonesia has a lot of customers. We want to make sure that they know after the last two years we have been busy fixing our problems and when we come out, we are coming out here first.

I hope that Jakartans have something that feels like pride. This is the first step of everything, it will be interesting.

In terms of Indonesia, I know this is a very big consumer market so far. It is also one of the biggest BBM markets for us. But from our revenue perspective probably not one of the top because 80 percent of our customer base is in the so-called regulated industry, such as the governments, the banks, the healthcare system and the judicial system.

How will you compete with other phones from competitors such as iPhone and Android-based phones which have become increasingly dominant in Indonesia’s market?

They are very focused on consumers. We have a very strong hold in enterprise. We do compete in the consumer space, and the product we launched [the Z3] is a very competitive product, especially since our brand is really big here in Indonesia.

I hope to sell the Z3 a lot, like a million units or something. But I am actually more focused on market share. I want to increase our market share. Whatever that account is, very honestly, I have never focused on accounts and you know I always tell people the way I determine whether it will be successful is how well obviously the market receives an under $200 [phone] with our software, with our brand on it, the quality that we have and security that we have.

And secondly, does that get us to win market share from this point? We have been losing market share in the last two years, and I would like to turn that corner. If I can turn that corner, then I can say that is successful.

Do you have any plan to launch other products besides cell phones in Indonesia?

If we will do another thing, we will probably go to phablet. I think if you look at our strategy and if you look at where the market goes, there is definitely a good market for something between a phone and tablet.

I think the phablet could be early, the tablet is already late. That is not a bad thing, because you can bring new technology. But, if I have the opportunity I will go to phablet. […] we will build what the market wants.

BlackBerry on Thursday reported a quarterly loss that was smaller than analysts had expected.

After the earnings announcement, the company's shares rose in premarket trading. (Click here to get the latest quotes.)

BlackBerry posted a first-quarter loss excluding items of 11 cents per share, narrowing from a loss of 13 cents a share in the year-earlier period.
Revenue fell to $966 million from $3.07 billion a year ago.

Analysts had expected the company to report a loss of 26 cents a share on $963 million in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.

Earlier this week, BlackBerry said it agreed on a licensing deal with Amazon.com that will let the Canadian smartphone maker offer some 240,000 Android apps from Amazon's app store on its BlackBerry 10 devices this fall.

The move is the latest by the smartphone pioneer to streamline its focus as it attempts to reinvent itself under new Chief Executive John Chen as BlackBerry phones have lost ground to Apple's iPhone and Samsung Electronics' Galaxy devices.

—By CNBC. Reuters contributed to this story.

www.cnbc.com/id/101771195

Catching shorts
Pratket up 11% to 9.2x

Citron Raises Target to $20…

http://www.citronresearch.com

What I think about the very bullish Citron report on BlackBerry

By Chris Umiastowski on 20 Jan 2014 03:39 pm EST

http://m.crackberry.com/what-i-think-abo...blackberry

This morning I had a chance to sit down with a hot cup (ok, several cups) of coffee and read the recently-published and very bullish report on BlackBerry by Citron Research. I have a feeling most of you haven’t ever heard of Citron before, but neither had I. That said, I’ve become a big fan of them.

Who is Citron? If you read most of the stories that reference their BlackBerry report from Friday and today, you’d think they were a huge firm. Instead, they’re just private investors who publish really interesting and well-researched reports. They write reports that I wish Wall Street had the nuts to write. The main man behind the brand is Andrew Left. I’m not sure if it’s a one man shop or if he hires research help, but it’s clear from the website that Left is in charge of publishing stuff and he is a private investor not a Wall Street research firm. All of his reports are freely available.

As you might have guessed from the name, “Citron” (French for lemon) tends to focus on what it feels are broken, fraudulent or overvalued businesses. In other words, they write about stocks that they think are lemons. Occasionally they write about stocks that are no longer lemons as was the case with their BlackBerry report last Friday.

It’s worth reading the 12-page report that Mr. Left published. He makes a very strong case for the strength of BlackBerry’s balance sheet and the transformation of the business towards enterprise software and services. Importantly, he spends ample time discussing John Chen and the new management team members that have come in under Chen’s leadership. He points out that BlackBerry’s mobile device management solution is earning much better feedback (in the Google Play store) versus the competition, and he spends ample time ripping other analysts to shreds.

I’ve covered BlackBerry since 2000, so I know the stock’s history better than most observers. In the early days it was covered by Canadian analysts and very few US analysts on Wall Street. When the US analysts moved in it was always the same. BlackBerry was considered a part of the “communications equipment” sector. The US analysts covering BlackBerry were the same guys covering Nokia, Motorola, and other wireless hardware makers. That made sense at the time, but it doesn’t make sense anymore. This is why Citron’s Mr. Left thinks analysts have the story all wrong today.

It’s hard to argue with his logic. I agree with him. The Canadian analyst crowd (those who have covered the stock long enough) have a bit of an advantage because BlackBerry was always a bit of a special situation. Canadian analysts were often earlier to the story (it’s in our backyard) and didn’t cover the other wireless handset makers, so they had more time to dedicate to learning about the intricacies of BlackBerry. With the enormous growth that BlackBerry saw over the last decade, it’s no surprise that everyone has been trained to focus intently on hardware sales. Given the shift of focus to enterprise mobile management, we need to push the reset button on how we evaluate the stock.

It’s pretty obvious to me that BlackBerry is either going to be successful in transitioning to an enterprise play or it’s heading towards complete destruction with essentially zero value
Speaking of pushing the reset button, I think the change of management in the enterprise division of BlackBerry is really important. I’ve been critical of the folks in charge of BES over the past few years. It really felt like BlackBerry wasn’t spending enough energy improving BES. That’s why I’m so happy having seen John Chen take near-immediate action to install new leadership there. It was time for change long ago. If it were not for these management changes I don’t think I could sit here and write an article that has a more upbeat tone to it. Instead I’d just worry that they’re now entirely focused on an area that’s still being run poorly. In other words, Chen hit the reset button on the management team that is responsible for the future of the company (enterprise software and services).

As a final thought for now, I think a lot of analysts on BlackBerry are being chickens with target prices that aren’t far away from where the stock was trading at the time they published their targets. It’s pretty obvious to me that BlackBerry is either going to be successful in transitioning to an enterprise play or it’s heading towards complete destruction with essentially zero value. I’d definitely prefer the former scenario since I still hold shares (I’ve never sold, for those wondering).

So if I’m right in saying we have a fairly binary outcome, then when the stock was trading at $6 (last month) anything in the $4-10 target price range is pretty gutless. I’d like to see more analysts make bold calls. For example, Citi had a $4 target price based on what sounds like a complete failure of the business and a sum of the parts valuation. Here’s the thing: No tech company is ever worth it’s cash + other assets. As long as the board of directors doesn’t shut down the business (does that ever happen?), they go for broke. I think analysts who really want to make a call on the stock should either say it’s worth nothing (yeah, $0 target price) or they should be saying the business will recover as an profitable enterprise play.

Maybe this should be the topic of a separate article, but the short version is this: I think a successful BlackBerry in the enterprise (stabilized revenue, profitable, software focus) is worth $20 per share or more. Zero or $20 … or something like that. Any other call equates to a non-bet.