BlackBerry (BB.TO)

John Chen had been put in place to turn the company around, and the big shareholders are going to give him leeway. Has brought costs down from a quarterly run rate of $2 billion down to $500 million a quarter. They are re-launching products and hopefully they’ll get some traction there. Expectations are very low and the market share is very low, so there is some room for some improvement. Trying to transition more to a software business and away from handsets, but that will take time. As they refocus on the mobile device management segment in corporate enterprise over the next 2 years, we should see the benefits. The last 3 quarters have been free cash flow positive.

When John Chen came on he felt they had a good jockey. He has a lot of insight into the industry. The company has a lot of value. They still have huge, huge revenues. Thinks this could go up quite a bit. When a well known company like this has takeover rumours, it can move very, very quickly up, and potentially down.

His view on this is that it is a bit of a broken story, so he wouldn’t put his money at risk where it might not work. He is not aware of any tech company that has ultimately turned around very, very successfully and gone on to become something else, especially a single product story.

It is hard to see where it will go from here. It is a difficult environment. He thinks it would work better if Amazon bought them out. He is not sure BB-T will be around in a year.

They still have negative earnings, so it can’t be in his portfolio with negative earnings. He doesn’t see this turning in their favour. This is not a stock that he would own at this point.

The trend is still to the upside. It is below its 20 day moving average, so it is a mixed technical picture.

For a long time this has been extremely speculative, and too speculative for him. The future is uncertain. Anybody buying the stock is betting on the fact that they will be able to turn things around. He doesn’t feel there is enough evidence or data to make an educated decision on whether this company will turn it around or not. There are easier ways to pick your way through the market.

This is a company that has surprised to the upside in 4 of the last 5 quarters. That doesn’t mean they are profitable yet, but they certainly appear to be making a turn. Looking at the analysts’ consensus on the stock, it is still not a really loved stock. If you saw them produce some positive numbers and the analysts all revised up at the same time, the stock could have a bit of a move.

CEO has done a masterful job of trying to figure out where the company wants to be in its next life, but just too much of a punt at this point in time. Taking their core competencies, the brand, their technological advantage around security, they are in the midst of a transformation.

(Top Pick Jan 14/14, Up 37.80%) Likes what he sees. Loves turn around stories. It was a ‘coming out of the blue’ strategy.

This is on a nice comeback trail. The stock has come up since John Chen took over about a year ago. He has done a lot of right things, including cutting costs to get to cash flow breakeven and narrowed the focus of the company to enterprise business users as well as software. A lot of things are taking shape, so he really likes the prospects however, the current stock price cannot be justified based on the short-term earnings. It has a lot of challenges because of the very small market share as well as continuing to lose service revenue which is high margin. You have to make a bit of a bet on this, but he thinks John Chen will be successful. It won’t be quick and easy.

The more things go on, the more he likes the stock. John Chen has lucked into other potential big winners. All of this Internet security stuff, such as Sony officers and Directors being told to use Blackberry only, that is advertising that you can’t buy. The security of the blackberry system is such that he suspects there will be a lot more of this. This is now a very, very interesting stock. He has an immediate target of $15 short-term, but followed by much higher targets.

Not a technologist, so can’t predict what a company like this is going to be doing in 5-10 years from now. Too difficult for him to wrap his head around as to what is going to happen down the road. He just doesn’t look at this name because of the nature of it.

Stock is holding in nicely at around the $11 level. It is clearly business oriented and security oriented. Likes John Chen and thinks he is very impressive. He knows what to do. Handhelds is not a good area, but they are steering towards software.

Likes what management has done, but doesn’t like the sector in general. There is a lot of competition, especially from the Chinese manufacturers of hand sets. This company has done very well at turning itself around, but because of the sector and that he thinks margins are coming down, he would not be in this at this time.