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BlackBerry Will Sell Itself For $4.7 Billion
Nerval's Lobster writes "A consortium led by financial-holding company Fairfax Financial has agreed to acquire BlackBerry for $4.7 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Fairfax Financial will acquire every BlackBerry stock-share it doesn't already own. Further details are pending, including future management structure and whether BlackBerry will continue with its stated intent to lay off thousands of employees over the next few months. 'The Special Committee is seeking the best available outcome for the Company's constituents, including for shareholders,' Barbara Stymiest, chair of BlackBerry's Board of Directors, wrote in a statement. 'Importantly, the go-shop process provides an opportunity to determine if there are alternatives superior to the present proposal from the Fairfax consortium.' A special committee formed by BlackBerry's Board of Directors had spent the past few weeks looking for a potential acquirer. BlackBerry has seen its market-share crumble as businesses and consumers embrace rivals such as Apple's iPhone and Google Android devices."
What I am most curious about is who is part of that consortium. That will be the most telling about the future of BlackBerry.
My guess is a collection of tech companies that want to keep BlackBerry's patents out of the hands of a patent troll and thus the company will be closed down, sold off in parts, and otherwise officially killed and the patents will be shared among the consortium companies and kept safe. Because, let's be honest - BlackBerry is dead - there is nothing else of significant value remaining in the company.
RIM (and Nokia) made the biggest mistake possible by ignoring the iPhone and what it represented to the entire mobile industry. Their complacency killed the company. They changed far too little, faaaaaar too late.
(Ironically, my captcha was "overtake"...)
Sigh. Not only did that joke stop being funny years ago (if it ever was funny) but RIM is no longer in their name anyway.
In 2 years time, watch for this news headline:
"Fairfax Financial announces a $4.6 billion writedown on the value of their BlackBerry acquisition. Layoffs are proceeding. Fairfax Financial has announced plans to sell off all corporate assets including BlackBerry's patent portfolio. A buyer has not been identified at this time."
go back to when you were private and cared about product/customer rather than investors and their growth projections.
Much as I generally agree with you, Blackberry has been losing money at an increasing rate for some time. Privately held companies (of the real kind, not the private equity scam variety) can afford to take more of a long term view, being freed from the shackles of the self-important and absurdly overpaid idiots called stock analysts. Nevertheless, even privately held companies need some prospect of making a profit.
Checking last years balance sheet 4.7 billion is about how much RIM has in owned property.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
They own several billion in buildings, patents, factories, etc.
Even if they liquidate tomorrow, they don't lose that much.
Plus, Blackberry actually owns a few really important patents, for example, a critical patent on eliptic curve cryptography, which is the foundation off the next generation of cryptosystems.
Interesting, to say the least.
Comparisons between Nortel and Blackberry are unfair. Although the burst of the internet bubble contributed tremendously, the nail in Nortel's coffin was fraudulent accounting and improperly booked revenue which led to the principals being criminally charged. None of this occurred with Blackberry - BB was the victim of bad corporate decisions and management reacting too late to the iPhone and Android effect. Disappointing to the extreme, but very different from the Nortel story.
Fire everyone, chop it up into marketable parts, sell the hard assets for cash, license the IP through a troll. It's the MBA way.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Checking last years balance sheet 4.7 billion is about how much RIM has in owned property.
Does that $4.7 billion balance sheet include the $1 billion worth of unsold phones that Blackberry is stuck with?
(As reported in the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323308504579087471781835480.html)
In all reality, this private equity firm is probably going to strip all the remaining assets from BlackBerry and kill the company, but being out of the limelight is the best thing for a company in this situation to do.
When a company is publicly traded, you can _maybe_ get it to agree to changes that pay off in 1 or 2 quarters. The stock analysts and CNBC idiots make it so that every time the CEO goes to the bathroom is scrutinized for any shred of news. Anything beyond that 2-quarter limit just can't be done. Anything that involves tough decisions that affect share price can't be done either. BlackBerry needs that kind of time out of the public eye to fix the problems they have. It's too bad also -- because we're stuck in the position of having our retirements dependent on the fickle stock market (those of us without pensions, that is.) I think that if the stock market went back to being a rich man's club, and we didn't have entire news organizations waiting to pounce on every utterance that company executives make, the funding picture for companies would be much better. Look at how much negative press BlackBerry has endured -- no matter what they do, every news outlet says "they suck." Gee, why can't we keep the share price up? Why isn't anyone ignoring the advice and investing?
I echo the sentiments of others in this thread though -- Microsoft would be stupid to not buy the patents they have, and they could even fold the secure messaging stuff into Exchange.
Atari, Commodore, Palm, Nokia, RIM/Blackberry, Anonymous Coward.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I'm sorry if I insulted your joke but you really should know that equating jobs at BlackBerry with "RIMjobs" isn't funny. Repeating a joke that is made at least 5 times in every thread about BlackBerry (and even more often when they were still called RIM) is not clever or funny. It is trite and lame. You do not have to resort to trying to insult me. Or propositioning me? I don't know- it wasn't very clear.
Is it just me, or is this somewhat fishy? First, the company posts an almost billion-dollar loss on Friday then botches the BBM to iOS/Android rollout. And then once the share price is driven down to almost $8, sells itself for $9 / share.
And of course there is this: http://www.thestar.com/business/2013/08/16/blackberry_ceo_thorsten_heins_could_get_556_million_if_ousted_after_sale.html
What effects? BB has been dead for awhile, its been a zombie with a billion phones they can't sell and an OS nobody wants. Most likely these vultures will sell off the assets and keep the IP for some major trolling.
The only ones I feel sorry for is the folks on the lines, the smart ones that had skills that would translate have moved on, all that is left is the poor slobs that couldn't find other employment and in this economy? Well let us hope the evil tea party elitists don't kill foodstamps otherwise many of them will end up going hungry.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
What are you talking about? First of all BlackBerry is a Canadian company so your spiel about the tea party and foodstamps is more trite garbage.
They still have a large workforce, tonnes of patents and their own OS ecosystem. There interesting things to be discussed other than lame jokes. I know Slashdot has made lame and tired jokes into an art-form but it would be nice if it didn't fully take the place of real discussion.
Looking at the balance sheet, there's about $2.8BN in cash, $900MM in inventory (figure that's basically zero now), and payables exceed receivables by about $1BN, so you're looking at a liquidation value of around $2BN. There's $2.2BN in property/plant/equipment, but it's highly unlikely you could actually get $2.2BN for that.
If we knew their "angle" we'd be rich like Watsa.
Huh? It really shouldn't take 3 years to develop an Android port. Android is already out there and available, and better yet you can use the CyanogenMod version which is also freely available. The only thing that'd be a problem is getting all the drivers for the hardware, but how much of the hardware is different from other phones and doesn't already have Android drivers available from the silicon mfgrs? If they got serious about it, and hired some consultants with Android expertise, they really should be able to get something ready within 3 months.
The OS ecosystem is completely worthless; remember, the reason they're failing is because no one wants their OS, they want iOS or Android (or in rare cases, WinPhone). The only things they have that are worth anything are 1) their workforce, which isn't worth much since they're experts in a dead OS, but their hardware design teams might be valuable and maybe the software teams can be retrained for Android, and 2) their patents.
Android apps run on BB phones. Why bother with a port which amounts to a downgrade? Who would want a Z10 with Android that doesn't want a Z10 with BB10?