BlackBerry (BB.TO)

(Market Call Minute.) Continuing to struggle. Most recent quarter was positive because of expense reductions.

Thinks they are making some progress in transforming the company, but their problem is that they have a tiny market share in the phone business. They are up against really, really tough competitors. This is now more of a play on what is their intellectual property position worth in a liquidation scenario.

Mr. Chen and his management team are continuing to append their security model. One understands now that it is not going to be a hardware challenge to Apple, android, etc. This is going to take time. Numbers have been getting better.

He likes this company. Thinks John Chen has been doing what he said he was going to do. He cut costs and is profitable. The next goal over the next year is to increase revenues. He is happy to Hold the stock. It is certainly not out of the woods. They have a lot of money in the bank as well as the backing of Fairfax Financial.

It is almost like it is an asset value play at this stage and probably worth $14-$17. CEO has done a great job and got it from $6-$12, but he doesn’t think there is an amazing amount left. It is hard to value and it is hard to look at the earnings to find value.

In the past, he has Shorted this, but more as a temporary Short. When he looks at a name like this, he is happy to be on the sidelines. The industry is changing so fast.

(Market Call Minute.) Transitioning from hardware to software, but it is taking a long time. The service revenues they are getting from their older devices are actually much higher versus the newer ones. They are not expected to make money for a few years.

(Owns a very small amount of this, but at clients’ direction.) He has great difficulty analysing their future prospects. Right now, they have done a lot better than a lot of people have thought. They seem to be surviving, but it is a tough environment. If you invest in this, you are not going to get much of a dividend. It could languish in this particular zone for a long time.

An extremely volatile stock. Have gone from being a leader in the smart phone business to a niche player in this market. The franchise is probably a little bit undervalued here. In the short term, they are still not making any significant amounts of money. They have an OK balance sheet. Feels John Chen is doing the right things. He doesn’t see any near-term catalysts for this. It might be a good trading stock.

This is always a big trading stock. Rumours are going to allow you to make 10% if you are on the right side. He is starting to warm up to this one a bit. His biggest problem with this is really the industry. There are companies out of China that are coming out with ultra low cost handsets. The handset side is probably going to go to almost zero margins for this company. The software side is very attractive. Security is a really nice niche in this business.

He thinks you have missed the boat on this. It was a stellar story from 2000 up to about 2008. After that, it has been all downhill. It has the best email system, but the market is fixated on the lowest app, and as a consequence, the ecosystem that supports that, continues to get smaller. It is now a corporate product, not a retail product.

He likes this turnaround story. It was one of his ‘coming out of the blue’ picks. This means the stock price has a positive transit of EBV -3. Likes what John Chan is doing. It does not have a model price because we don’t have earnings yet. This is a software company. The handsets are a circus.

Could be worth zero or could be worth a lot more. The risk is the technological obsolescence and the worry that people who are using blackberries, are all going to switch to iPhones. Have been trying to convert more to a software based platform, benefiting from the strength of their software system. With the pretty cheap valuation and the strong balance sheet, he wouldn’t be surprised to see this as a takeout candidate.

This is a tough one. The new CEO seems to be getting some traction. People seem to believe that he is able to deliver. The trick is whether they can get the new product to market, and gain some traction, remains to be seen.

Management has done a surprisingly good job here. It is too risky for him and he does not see a future for Blackberry handsets.