Blackberry Reports $965 Million Loss

It had previously warned that this quarter’s financial results would be bad, and on Friday Blackberry confirmed that it lost nearly $1 billion in its most recent quarter. The Canadian smartphone manufacturer is up for sale, and insurance firm Fairfax Financial says it’s considering making an offer.

Ian Austen with The New York Times reported, “Facing an uncertain future and a highly conditional takeover bid, BlackBerry said on Friday that it lost $965 million on sales of $1.6 billion during its fiscal second quarter. The loss mainly reflected a $934 million write-down of a growing inventory of unwanted BlackBerry Z10 phones, the devices that the company had hoped would restore its fortunes, as well as $72 million in charges related largely to layoffs.”

Bloomberg’s Hugo Miller added, “Sales in the Americas, an area the company once dominated, fell faster than anywhere else, tumbling 56 percent to $610 million.”

CNNMoney’s Julianne Pepitone noted, “In what could be the understatement of the year, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said in a press release that the company is ‘disappointed’ with the results. ‘We understand how some of the activities we are going through create uncertainty, but we remain a financially strong company with $2.6 billion in cash and no debt,’ Heins insisted.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Will Connors recalled, “Last Friday, the embattled smartphone maker warned it would report a hefty operating loss, mostly due to a nearly $1 billion charge on inventory of unsold phones, and said it would lay off 4,500 employees. On Monday, BlackBerry announced that it reached a preliminary deal with its biggest shareholder—Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd.—to take the company private for about $4.7 billion, or $9 a share.”

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020

• Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 05, 2020

• The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  August 14, 2020