Hat tip to Pray for the world. Financial Post ArticleYou should real the whole article but here are a few parts to chew on.
The car as your cellphone: How BlackBerry's deal with Amazon could transform your 'in-vehicle experiences’
Analysts say it’s a new frontier in the auto industry and could be a game changer for the Waterloo-based maker
It’s truly the next frontier of how you can target a consumer based on their buying preferences, their driving preferences, their life preferences
JOE MCCABE, CEO, AUTOFORECAST SOLUTIONS
At stake is billions of dollars a year in computing technology, vehicle upgrades, app developments and advertising as car makers push the development of sensor-laden, and eventually autonomous, vehicles spewing tons of data while AWS and its rivals Microsoft Corp.’s Azure, Alibaba Group.’s Cloud unit and Alphabet Inc.’s Google Cloud compete to manipulate those bytes.
BlackBerry and AWS declined to state how much their deal is valued at. They also did not reveal which automakers will be the first to use IVY, but said it should appear on 2023 models.
“This is going to put them at that forefront because they’ve already integrated in the security and safety side, they’re already invested in the vehicle side and now leveraging the partnership with Amazon is just going to give them a huge amount of growth into this inevitability of vehicles being a mobility service and another revenue model,” McCabe said.
Expectations of minimal growth next year and that earnings per share of 40 cents “will take time,” plus a valuation that is below peers due to lower growth, all contribute to the outlook, Coupland said.
Still, he noted the deal is a positive for BlackBerry because of expected demand from global automakers. With an expectation that IVY generates revenue of $10 per new vehicle from 15 per cent of the global light vehicle production, Coupland raised the stock’s price target to $8 from $5.50. The Blackberry stock has jumped 37 per cent since the AWS announcement and was trading at $10.54 per share on the Toronto Stock Exchange Thursday.
Likewise, Scotiabank is taking a wait-and-see approach to its assessment. “IVY offers an intriguing opportunity for Blackberry, however we remain cautious on the shares as we await initial customer roll-outs and further clarity on the end-user applications and associated revenue model,” analyst Paul Steep wrote in a Dec. 2 note.
“We view BlackBerry as holding potential in various areas of the business (e.g., security software, QNX) along with having a strong balance sheet and a track record of innovation. However, we would need to see a material improvement in the performance of the firm’s software businesses to become more constructive on the shares.”