The company formally known as Research In Motion has had a bit of a tough few years, with people leaving the platform in droves and the launch of the company’s saviour – BB10 – yet to set the world alight. In fact Blackberry now has less marketshare than Windows Phone, and the company have suffered heavy losses that don’t look like turning around soon.
So today the Blackberry board announced they were forming a committee to explore “strategic options for the business” and even more significantly, suspended trading in stock of the company.
The suspending of stock was voluntary, and done at the same time as the announcement, which is normally what happens when a sale is imminent. Now a sale could have many forms of course – Blackberry could just be taking itself into private ownership with a healthy injection of cash to lick its wounds and regroup without shareholder pressure. Then again it could also mean they have thrown in the towel, and another tech company is about to buy them.
The rest of the week will be key, and we could see announcement that early if there is an offer on the table.
We’ll be keeping our eyes on this.
Press Release: August 12, 2013 07:57 ET
BlackBerry Board of Directors Announces Exploration of Strategic Alternatives
WATERLOO, ONTARIO–(Marketwired – Aug. 12, 2013) – BlackBerry Limited (NASDAQ:BBRY)(TSX:BB), a world leader in the mobile communications market, today announced that the Company’s Board of Directors has formed a Special Committee to explore strategic alternatives to enhance value and increase scale in order to accelerate BlackBerry 10 deployment. These alternatives could include, among others, possible joint ventures, strategic partnerships or alliances, a sale of the Company or other possible transactions.
The Special Committee of the Board is comprised of Barbara Stymiest, Thorsten Heins, Richard Lynch and Bert Nordberg, and will be chaired by Timothy Dattels.
With the announcement of the Special Committee, Prem Watsa, Chairman and CEO of Fairfax Financial informed the Company that he felt it was appropriate to resign due to potential conflicts that may arise during the process. Fairfax Financial is the largest BlackBerry shareholder. Mr. Watsa said, “I continue to be a strong supporter of the Company, the Board and Management as they move forward during this process, and Fairfax Financial has no current intention of selling its shares.”
“During the past year, management and the Board have been focused on launching the BlackBerry 10 platform and BES 10, establishing a strong financial position, and evaluating the best approach to delivering long-term value for customers and shareholders,” said Timothy Dattels, Chairman of BlackBerry’s Special Committee of the Board. “Given the importance and strength of our technology, and the evolving industry and competitive landscape, we believe that now is the right time to explore strategic alternatives.”
Thorsten Heins, President and Chief Executive Officer of BlackBerry, added, “We continue to see compelling long-term opportunities for BlackBerry 10, we have exceptional technology that customers are embracing, we have a strong balance sheet and we are pleased with the progress that has been made in our transition. As the Special Committee focuses on exploring alternatives, we will be continuing with our strategy of reducing cost, driving efficiency and accelerating the deployment of BES 10, as well as driving adoption of BlackBerry 10 smartphones, launching the multi-platform BBM social messaging service, and pursuing mobile computing opportunities by leveraging the secure and reliable BlackBerry Global Data Network.”
JP Morgan Securities LLC is serving as financial advisor to BlackBerry and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Torys LLP are serving as legal advisors.
There can be no assurance that this exploration process will result in any transaction. The Company does not currently intend to disclose further developments with respect to this process, unless and until its Board of Directors approves a specific transaction or otherwise concludes the review of strategic alternatives.
While I don’t like BB, It would be cool for Google to buy them for their IP.
Converting blackberry enterprise to a google product would help corps still clinging to BB to smoothly transition to android. Given that android device manager is out, the rudiments for robust corp asset handling is in place, as is profile support (personal/work profiles)
Microsoft buy them? They’ve certainly got deep enough pockets and although their share of the market has been growing it’s still piddly compared to the big G or Apple.
the MS angle in interesting, I was always puzzled at how BB did a better job of enterprise/outlook integration that Microsoft themselves.
Shock horror – I predicted this 3 years ago when they moved IP, service and hardware in to different entities…. Any of the big three could make a play but I would expect MS to be the end result so they can get back in to the corp’ world again.