RE:Catalysts
I hate to pour cold water on this, but here is my perspective on these points.
1. Quite possible, but with poor hardware sales and rapidly decreasing service revenues, no one thinks the cash will last.
2. Optimistic. The last number was 25,000 commercial or test installations, which was up from 17,000 a few months ago. Also, service revenue is declining precipitously. What would be the catalyst for that number to increase to $1B in the quarter?
3. Optimistic. Who is buying these phones with so much uncertainty around the company?
4. I believe the last number we heard was 80 million, and uptake seems to have flatlined. 120 million is very optimistic.
All evidence points to BB's subscriber base falling precipitously (folks in developing world going to Android now), which is going to destroy service revenue.
RE: advertisements, I would say only do this if you really want to push BB10. If Chen is deciding to ditch hardware or go Android, spending precious cash on ads now makes no sense. They should be aggressively promoting BBM-X and BES10, however. Those are two areas where there is a clear opportunity to grow their business.
The stock is looking mightly interesting here, but I still can't buy because there is no plan in place. I think with their cash the company can muddle through for much longer than the broader market expects, but without a compelling and clear plan forward there isn't much impetus to lay money down. That said, you can easily make a case that the sum of the parts is worth more than where the share price is trading now. Minus net current assets, you can buy the business at $7 per share for roughly $1.25B, which is pretty bonkers.