Turnaround plan starting to pay off

Article Excerpt

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…