Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Add two single-digit numbers, larger than 7 and you will get a value nearer to 20 than 10.
I don't think maths need explaining more than this.
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.
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.