It's simply astonishing how this company fails to grow its revenue.
Quarter after quarter they disappoint. They are in great and incredibly fast growing markets. Their competitors are growing amazingly fast. They have wonderful technology (thanks to genius Mike Lazaridis) and very secure software. Each and every quarter Chen lists numerous new (often big) customers. They have countless partnerships and there are constantly new partnerships to be announced. They used a lot of precious cash to acquire companies, which should have helped to increase revenues. Their software is in 175 million vehicles. They even announced a deal with none other than Amazon. One of the largest companies on planet earth. They expanded their partnership with Baidu, which I believe many consider to be China's Google. They settled a 3-year legal battle in court with Facebook. Another colossal company. They sold 90 patents to Huawei And yet, once again, their revenues are DOWN and they reported another huge GAAP loss!
I made horrible and utterly stupid mistakes. I should have sold all of my BlackBerry stock when the stock price went up all the way to $28.77 USD, thanks to WSB. I just sold half. But then I made an even bigger mistake. I really thought that the deal with Amazon would be a game changer. What a fool I am! So I bought back quite a lot of shares on the way down. I now own more shares than I ever did before, and I was already retarded enough to be a bagholder all the way from October 2009. I thought that the deal with Amazon and the settlement with Facebook would have provided a bottom in the stock price. It looks like I was dead wrong, once AGAIN!
Well I don't know what to do anymore. I've totally lost faith right now. A part of me just wants to sell all of it at a huge loss. Another part of me (irrational part) still has hopes that things will somehow change for the better. But I think this stock has a high probability of going to zero within a couple of years from now. That is if Chen doesn't go away. Only a really capable CEO could still save this company in my view. Promises, excuses, failed plans and real GAAP losses is all we ever got, ever since Chen took over as CEO.
This man seems totally unable to do the job. He has no vision and has failed in every regard. And still he simply refuses to go. Had he had any decency or conscience, he would have stepped down many years ago. But no, he's shameless. Perhaps even a psychopath. He's destroying a company that isn't his own. People have been losing a lot of money because he messed up. He's got nothing to lose. No matter what the outcome will be, he will still benefit greatly.
- He said he would save the handset division. He failed at that.
- Many years ago he said he would stabilize and then grow revenues. Again he miserably failed to do so until now.
- He said a long time ago, that the transformation was completed and so that we would grow.
- When he took over as CEO, BBM was still viable. Now it's as good as dead.
- BlackBerry Radar looked so promising, that analyst Gus Papageorgiou once made a case for $45 USD for BlackBerry if and when it would become a success. Needless to say that Chen also miserably failed here. The revenue generated at BlackBerry Radar nowadays is just laughable.
- Acquisitions of companies like Good Technology, AtHoc and such, did add some software revenue, but then the growth stalled. In fact, the revenues must have gone down.
- The acquisition of Cylance was a horrible, at least from a financial perspective, mistake. He squandered precious cash, which in my view, has shortened the life expectancy and chances of survival tremendously.
- Cylance was a very strong growing company before BlackBerry acquired it. I believe their growth was about 90% on a year-to-year basis. But once Mr. Chen got it into his possession, the growth magically stopped and it's very likely that nowadays the revenue is already in decline.
- The total revenue of Cylance + BlackBerry (before the acquisition of Cylance) combined is now lower than what BlackBerry was able to generate in revenues without Cylance. Which must mean that either the Cylance revenue is now zero, or in case it's not, the revenue of the former BlackBerry company without Cylance didn't grow, but shrank (by a lot).
- He has eroded almost all value from the balance sheet. Look at their assets. What do they still have? Yes, they still have some cash and for now they are still cash flow positive. But in November 2023 they will have to repay $535 million to Fairfax. Net cash is just a very meager amount. Property, plant and equipment value is fading away. So is everything really.
- Then there's the Goodwill on the balance sheet. Goodwill is, I am not an accountant or anything. I am just a (very) dumb investor, but to me Goodwill means the amount you overpaid for an acquisition which still needs to be written off. There's a substantial amount of $849 million still on their balance sheet. No doubt this amount is related to the money Chen squandered to acquire Cylance. If you see that now according to the balance sheet shareholder's equity has fallen to an amount of just $1.5 billion and you realize that the $849 million still needs to be written off... it doesn't leave a whole lot of value within the company. I believe it's just about $650 million. That's a mere $1.15 per share! No more than $1.15 book value per share.
- Chen has been reporting non-GAAP profits almost all of the time. But these are utterly misleading. Take Cylance for instance. He paid $1.4 billion for Cylance. That was $1.4 billion real cash, real money. Now it turns out that Cylance wasn't worth such an amount. Maybe it's only worth $400 million. It means Chen destroyed $1 billion of real cash this way. Now you wouldn't have a clue when you just take a look at his utterly misleading and deceiving non-GAAP figures. Because since then he claims BlackBerry only made profits. But the $1 billion cash is really gone and thus the value of the company has decreased by $1 billion. This is solely reflected by the GAAP numbers. So anyone saying that reporting in non-GAAP numbers is no big deal, is very lead astray.
- Chen inherited a company which had a book value of about $6.89 per share. In the previous reported quarter FY21Q3 it had been reduced to just $3.21 per share (much less when you don't ignore the worthless Goodwill).
- FY21Q4, the results they just announced... Chen managed to destroy another $315 million of real value. That money is now gone. The company was $315 million less worth at the end of FY21Q4 than it was compared to when the quarter began. Of course, as so often, concealed by reporting a small non-GAAP profit. Still the shareholder's equity went down from about $1.8 billion to about $1.5 billion (with $849 Goodwill still to be written-off).
- Chen has now reported 29 quarterly results for which he himself was responsible. The sum of all the GAAP losses reported in those 29 quarters were $2.899 billion. Then we should also take into consideration that Chen got a total of $940 million from Qualcomm, which was sheer luck. And he got over $ 300 million from tax recoveries. So when we take these into the equation, Mr. Chen is responsible for a total GAAP loss of over $4.1 billion!!! Now how does one save a company (some people claim that he saved BlackBerry after all) only to destroy over $4 billion ($2.9 billion net after gains from taxes and Qualcomm) of real value???
The list is much longer than this. But I'm exhausted and my memory has been destroyed.
Only when the revenues will go up significantly, and SOON, real SOON, this company can still be saved. If not, I fear it will be game over. I might sell everything I have tomorrow at a (huge) loss. And lick my wounds. That is, if I can pull the trigger, I am too much of an emotional investor. I wasted so much time, energy and money on this horrible company/stock. The fear, the worries, the sleepless nights... And I have no idea how to recover my losses. Everything is at such a high valuation right now, and those stocks which aren't, are that way for a very good reason, like we can see with BlackBerry. Mr. Chen, thank you so much for destroying a company which held a lot of real value when you took over. For holding onto your position, knowing perfectly well that you are unable to do the job and knowing that so many individual shareholders will lose their money, dreams and retirement. No, of course, such a person should NEVER be thanked. Such a person is selfish, immoral, yes I dare say, such a person is nothing less than pure EVIL!