BlackBerry Ltd Estimates Clipped By Baird Analyst

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BlackBerry will not earn much revenue from its recently released Blackberry Classic, according to R.W. Baird’s William Power. He’s not very positive on Classic sales, so he lowered his price target on the Canadian firm to $9.

Estimates dropped

Power did not share many details in the report but said the BlackBerry Classic’s share of the fourth quarter revenue was expected to be greater. He also said after the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) it appears much of that revenue will not come until the fiscal first quarter.

The Canadian Smartphone maker released the BlackBerry Classic in New York on Dec. 17. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week, CEO John Chen announced a new partnership for the device.

Power has assigned a Neutral rating on the shares and lowered his estimates for the fourth fiscal quarter ending in February to $746.3 million in revenue and a net loss of 3 cents per share on sales of approximately 1.599 million BlackBerry units. The current estimates are down from the previous estimates of $937.3 million and break-even in profits on the back of 2.05 million units sold in the quarter. Also the new revenue estimate is below the consensus estimate of $831 million.

For fiscal 2016, Power has dropped his estimates to $4.01 billion and 35 cents per share from $4.32 billion and 42 cents per share. Sales of 9.43 million units are expected, which is a drop from the previous estimate of 10.42 million Blackberry units.

Not a positive sign for BlackBerry

Power sounded similar to Canaccord Genuity‘s Mike Walkley in saying that this quarter is the “revenue trough” for BlackBerry. However, “visibility across its segments remains limited,” he writes. Downward revision of estimates is not a good sign for BlackBerry, especially at a time when the CEO is expressing confidence about the survival of the company.

BlackBerry saw a drop of around 24% in its revenue from the hardware business. Overall, the company’s revenue is tumbling at a faster pace than many analysts are expecting, according to a report from Yahoo. Approximately 46% of its revenue comes from the hardware segment. In the third quarter of 2014, revenue from the hardware business came in at $361 million, compared to $476 million earlier.

The drop in revenues from hardware was unexpected, especially after BlackBerry announced last quarter that it sold 200,000 Passport units within the first two days of its launch. The Passport was seen as the most potent weapon from BlackBerry to compete with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android-based smartphones, especially in the enterprise segment.

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