BLACKBERRY LTD. $15 (Toronto symbol BB; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 528.5 million; Market cap: $7.9 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.7; No dividends paid; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative; www.blackberry.com) lost $148 million, or $0.28 a share, in its fiscal 2015 third quarter, which ended November 29, 2014 (all amounts except share price and market cap in U.S. dollars). A year earlier, it lost $4.4 billion, or $8.37 a share.
Excluding writedowns and other unusual items, BlackBerry earned $0.01 a share in the latest quarter, unchanged from a year earlier.
Revenue fell 33.5%, to $793 million from $1.2 billion. In the latest quarter, 46% of total revenue came from hardware sales, 46% from communication services and 8% from software. BlackBerry ended the quarter with cash of $3.1 billion, or $5.88 a share. Its long-term debt of $1.7 billion is equal to 26% of its market cap.
The company recently launched a new version of its BlackBerry Enterprise Services software, which lets businesses manage emails for a variety of mobile devices. The company has also started selling new smartphones aimed at business clients. These moves should help spur its revenue over the next few months.
BlackBerry is still a hold, but only for highly aggressive investors.