After posting losses in four consecutive quarters, Canadian handset maker BlackBerry has posted a net profit of $23 million for the quarter ended May 31, 2014 (Q1-FY15).
This however includes a non-cash income of $287 million associated with the change in the fair value of the debentures, offset by pre-tax restructuring charges of $226 million related to the Cost Optimization and Resource Efficiency (“CORE”) program which started in March 2012. Without these, the company would’ve posted a loss of $60 million for the quarter.
The total revenues was at $966 million for the quarter, registering a marginal 1% dip from $976 million revenues in the previous quarter.
Operating Highlights
– Services accounted for 54% of BlackBerry’s revenues, down from 56% in the previous quarter but more than double of 26% in the same quarter last year.
– Hardware sales accounted for 39% of BlackBerry’s total revenues for the quarter, marginally up from 37% in the previous quarter but a massive decline from 71% in the same quarter last year.
– Software and other revenues accounted for the remaining 7% of the BlackBerry’s total revenues, same as the previous quarter but up from 3% in the same quarter last year.
– During the quarter, BlackBerry sold around 2.6 million smartphones to end customers, down from 3.4 million smartphones in the previous quarter. However, it recognized revenues for only 1.6 million smartphones, as compared to 1.3 million smartphones in the previous quarter.
– BlackBerry launched a new budget smartphone Z3 in Indonesia and plans to roll it out to eight countries in the future. The phone is expected to launch in India next week, according to a PTI report.
– It launched a series of projects called Project Ion in the “Internet of Things” segment.
– BlackBerry has issued a total of 1.2 million BES10 licenses through its EZ Pass Program. The company mentioned that more than 10% of total licenses traded in from competing mobile device management platforms.EZ Pass allows customers to migrate from BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Service) 5 or competing MDM platforms to BES10. Through this program, it offers a free perpetual silver level licenses for BES10, free technical support services until January next year and a guaranteed free upgrade to BES12.
APAC revenues: BlackBerry generated revenues of $151 million from the Asia Pacific region, up from $140 million in the previous quarter but a massive decline from $518 million in the same quarter last year. APAC region accounted for 15.6% of the company’s revenues for the quarter, up from 14.4% in the previous quarter but down from 16.9% in the same quarter last year.
Cashflow: BlackBerry has a total of cash, cash equivalents, short-term and long-term investments of $3.1 billion as of May 31, 2014, as compared to $2.7 billion in the previous quarter. Excluding a tax refund receipt of $397 million and real estate sale proceeds of $287 million, the company used $255 million cash flow during the quarter.
Download: Press release & Financials
