BlackBerry sells for $4.7B

[rage2]

http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/black...tium-1.1466420

Shares halted right now, deal signed at $9/share.

BlackBerry Ltd. (TSX:BB) says it has signed a deal to be bought by a consortium led by its largest shareholder in a deal valued at U$4.7 billion.

The consortium led by Fairfax Financial Holdings. Ltd. (TSX:FFH) has offered US$9 per share in cash for the smartphone maker.

Under the deal, the consortium would all acquire of the outstanding shares of BlackBerry not held by Fairfax, which owns approximately a 10 per cent in the company.

The BlackBerry board of directors has approved the terms of the letter of agreement.

BlackBerry shares were down 60 cents at C$8.48 on the Toronto Stock Exchange shortly before a trading halt on North American markets.

Trading on public markets is set to resume at 2 p.m. ET.

[BigMass]

I guess i'll move this over here since this will turn into the BB discussion thread

android = VHS
QNX = Betamax

good quality, but your kid is going to hate you when you go to the video store and find out that %90 of the movies are not available to your format.

the Playbook IMO is probably the best tablet made (outdated now). High quality, great hardware, great OS. Problem is the lack of apps. You still can't get Skype for the playbook and when I travel that is the main form of communication that I use. Making the tablet completely worthless. Very small things like this add up to the failure of BB.

Z10 was also a failure. When your company is in the dumps you don't try out mass market Samsung and Apple. You create a niche. They should have come out with something bold like a 5.8"-6" phablet with top of the line hardware etc. Z10 is just boring and pointless. People thought the Note was crazy but it turned into one of the best ideas Samsung ever came out with. This type of risk is what BB should have taken, not played it safe.

[BigMass]

as for the final buyout price. Not much of a premium over what it's trading at now. Still overvalued IMO

[e36bmw///]

nm

[Aaaaaron]

I didn't think a deal would be made so quick.

It's a shame cause BB10 is really solid, but the apps are just lacking. I thought the Z10 was great, but BB should of just focused on QWERTY phones for businesses, gov't, military customers.

[rage2]

Originally posted by e36bmw///
So the $9/sh LOI puts the company value at $4.7B. With $2.8B in cash and short term investments and no debt, the EV is at $1.9B?
I think they might get a better offer than that

$1.9b for a company blowing through $1b a quarter is a pretty good price haha.

[Sugarphreak]

...

[e36bmw///]

nm

[rage2]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repor...ticle14471934/

Great article that answers a lot of questions. Too large to quote haha.

[ZenOps]

I've got a playbook.

Excellent webbrowsing, craptacular apps.

[sputnik]

Does Fairfax REALLY think that they can make Blackberry successful again or is that just to appease the masses?

I have a feeling that they just going to sell it off piece by piece and Blackberry will be gone in 12 months.

[rage2]

Originally posted by sputnik
Does Fairfax REALLY think that they can make Blackberry successful again or is that just to appease the masses?

I have a feeling that they just going to sell it off piece by piece and Blackberry will be gone in 12 months.

That's my guess as well. The email and BBM services business are still profitable, fire everyone, rip everything apart, scale down to just their profitable businesses, sell 'em. BBM and secure email will live on under Samsung or something, and the company dissolves.

At the end of the day, Fairfax isn't throwing away $4.7b. They're not experts at running a company. They're out to make a profit, and that's the only way out for BB. Nobody's going to buy a huge sinking ship.

[Dave P]

As a Fairfax employee, I sure hope this works out for my stock options haha.

[themack89]

lol... 6 Hours ago was talking with my dad about buying some up if it touched high 7's. Things move fast these days.

[Canmorite]

Seriously burst out laughing when I heard the takeout price. I remember RIM being so overvalued back in the day, was valued at 78B back in 2008

[icky2unk]

Originally posted by Canmorite
Seriously burst out laughing when I heard the takeout price. I remember RIM being so overvalued back in the day, was valued at 78B back in 2008

So?

Name a Tech firm that hasn't had an extremely high valuation at their peak.

/facepalm


Apple lost $200 Billion in market cap since their peak? Big deal it happens when any tech firm peaks.

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by sputnik
Does Fairfax REALLY think that they can make Blackberry successful again or is that just to appease the masses?

I have a feeling that they just going to sell it off piece by piece and Blackberry will be gone in 12 months.

If burn rate is $1B per quarter, I'm sure they can do it in 2 quarters or less.

[jaylo]

The inability to hook up third party phones to the BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10 was a major fail, also they were forcing our company to upgrade to BES 10 in order to use the Z10 and later models which is the first for BlackBerry to do.

BlackBerry 9900 has the worst quality in terms of damage susceptibility (moisture, glass, etc...) and we'd had more "it is your fault so we won't warranty it" models in history.

I did kind of read that BES 10 can allow 3rd party phones now, but not 100% sure of this

[rage2]

Originally posted by Xtrema
If burn rate is $1B per quarter, I'm sure they can do it in 2 quarters or less.

To be fair, the $1b loss this quarter was due to an inventory writedown on unsold Z10's, so it's not really repeatable. But that sums up BlackBerry over the last years, just have no clue when it comes to the market demand. It's kind of funny that there were shortages when the phone was announced. Wouldn't be surprised if it was an artificial shortage kinda like what Apple does to drum up demand.

[littledan]

i'm a little confused. So they did a non-cash write down of $1b for unsold inventory of Z10 etc. Does that mean they have $1b retail worth of Z10 sitting around or is that their COGS? what is the purpose of writing that down?