RE:Poor little activist multi-millionaire investor! The reason why this company is underperforming is because of those two. You make it sound like his mother Teresa and Mumbai or something.
Yasch22 wrote: All he wanted to do was to run point for his crew of LBO specialists.
Put in a "generous" offer of something like $6.50 or maybe even $7.50 US when the sp was still at $4.65 US.
That would have been might pleasing to Joe & Jenny Retail ! We were wondering, Will BlackBerry actually survive yet another massive correction? Will we ever get SOME of our money back?
Mr. Outraged Activist had big plans for November 2020. That's when the $605m debenture and all of its conditions were headed for the dustbin. The vulture fund money was ready to start pecking:
-- Buy out BB for a 20% premium, with market cap at $3.5 to $4b.
-- Saddle BB with new debt, or with the leverage from the leveraged buyout.
-- Sack 25% of the workforce, and replace all the highest-paid fellows with a caretaker crew.
-- Sell off the parts: There would be plenty of takers for every division, starting with the IP.
-- Use the impending FB settlement plus the $350m cash on hand to give giant bonuses to Mr. Outraged Activist and his motley crew.
So what happened?
1. Re-enter the S.W.A.T.S.A Team. Made a leveraged buyout a LOT more difficult with a revised debenture issue. The mistakes everyone talks about were nothing more than revisions from a provisional ruling by the TSX.
2. Add the BB-IVY announcement from December, which briefly raised the sp from US$5.80 to $8.50.
3. The gradual realization of what the sale of half the IP might mean for BB's future.
4. The upgrading and completion of the new product line.
5. The intervention of a competely different breed of activist investors, namely the Reddit-WSB crowd (decidedly not multi-millionaires).
End result? Here we are, hanging onto the US$14 level, WAY above what Mr. Outraged Multimillionaire Activist was probably hoping to pay for BB last November.