BlackBerry (BB.TO)

A high risk investment. Has done a great job over the near-term in cutting their costs and now they want to make the operating system their main business model going forward. We’ll have to see how that plays out. This will take some time and it is not a sure thing.

With what is going on in the last couple of months in technology and a lot of the moving parts in respect to the new love in Apple (AAPL-Q), Google (GOOG-Q) and even Amazon (AMZN-Q), probably some of its patents get bought. Doesn’t fit his criteria.

Avoided it like the plague for a long time and is glad he did. They are trying to morph it into a different company, but he cannot tell you where it will be. They have a huge right sizing to do.

Done a very good job in trying to right the ship. Down at $8.50, it is probably not in a bad position for a trade. He does not know if it will exist in a couple of years. For a trade you can probably make some money on the way to $10. Trading to him is a 3-4 week period.

Recent decline is not a buying opportunity. CEO is prepared to do things like he has done. It has to do with how they get value out of the BBM. A tough business.

One of the key decisions you should make on this is whether or not you should take a tax loss. If you have gains to write it off against, that could be prudent tax planning. He is a believer in the CEO, John Cheng, but also a believer that a turnaround takes a huge amount of time. Revenue has dropped 64%, which is scary, but at the same time costs were tremendously cut. Took a lot of write-offs again this past quarter and it wouldn’t surprise him if it happened again next quarter. Happy to hold it at this point given his Buy-In price.

The stock kind of ran up with a new CEO being put in place. Reported less of a loss than was anticipated and that was done through aggressive cost-cutting, which was the easy part of the equation. Revenue line did disappoint. The big question and overhang on the stock is how are they going to get revenues to start going the other way. This will take a while. If she owned, she would probably bite the bullet and take a loss.

The use of stop losses is very important. It took him out of the name, which limited his losses. It is interesting where we are sitting in the cycle right now. He was really impressed with what John Cheng had to say. He would not dare to put this in any of his core portfolios. Has no idea what is going to happen to this.

Quite a bit of good news has already been priced in. Friday morning’s conference call on earnings is going to be very important. Everybody is going to be looking at it for signs of a turnaround. They want to make sure that the “cash bleed” has stopped and maybe the company will be cash flow positive. If this doesn’t turn out well, he expects the stock will drop to the $7.60 US level and will hold there for a while.

You need to see better execution. They are in a difficult situation because competitors are so far ahead of them. Industry is going through some material change and that is why Apple is not doing so well. Maybe BB can come out of this very well. They have to consolidate their enterprise business. They have some good quality software business in their company, if they execute well on those you could see some strength.

It is hard for him to understand their technology and where their technology is going. The most fascinating thing is the number of people who are now buying in. There is now some major, smart money moving in.

Can’t make head or tails of this company. He would not be playing this stock. It’s in the hands of speculators or traders.

Have some big supporters. New CEO is very well respected and has decided to focus on the business client and get out of the hardware business because it is so commoditized. The future is still very cloudy. Still somewhat speculative. She would put her money somewhere else.

Two things have struck them recently. The 1^st is that Mr. Chen has come in to turn it around. The other thing that popped up last week is that they have had a great vote of confidence by the US military. Their security system is so good that the military doesn’t want to abandon it. It has had a good run recently so he would stand back and watch.

Very speculative so wouldn’t put your whole portfolio into it. These are very early days and he thinks John Chen is doing a fantastic job. Forget about the handset. What you are doing now is buying a software company. In another year or 2, we will have 5 billion smart phones out there. Secure communications going forward will become critically important. This is a software company that you are buying right around Book Value.