Research in Motion (RIMM) this afternoon reported fiscal Q3 revenue per share in line with a pre-announcement earlier this month, and earnings per share in line with its reduced range, but forecast Q4′s results below expectations.
Revenue in the three months ended in November fell 6%, year over year, but rose 24%, quarter to quarter, to $5.2 billion, yielding EPS of $1.27, excluding some costs.
Analysts had been modeling $5.26 billion and $1.19 per share. RIM’s own pre-announcement on December 2nd called for revenue to be “slightly lower” than the prior forecast of $5.3 billion to $5.6 billion, with EPS “below or at the mid-point” of the $1.20 to $1.40 per share range originally offered.
That adjusted revenue figure excludes a $54 million charge for the period of lost service revenue related to the company’s network outage during the quarter. The adjusted EPS figure excludes a $356 million charge to write-down inventory of the company’s PlayBook tablet computer. Including that charge, GAAP EPS came in at 51 cents a share.
For the current quarter, the company sees revenue of $4.6 billion to $4.9 billion, which is below the current $5.08 billion estimate. EPS is seen in a range of 80 cents to 95 cents, below the average $1.10 per share Street consensus.
BlackBerry shipments in the quarter are seen declining from last quarter’s 14.1 million units to a range of 11 million to 12 million units. The company had already warned BlackBerry shipments would decline this quarter, but had not previously said by how much.
BlackBerry subsribers rose 35%, year over year, to almost 75 million in the quarter, said co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, despite a service outage during the quarter.
The company sold 150,000 units of the PlayBook in the quarter, helped by promotions that it said increased demand.
The two chiefs further remarked,
RIM continues to have strong technology, unique service capabilities and a large installed base of customers, and we are more determined than ever to capitalize on our strengths to overcome the recent execution challenges surrounding product launches and the resulting financial performance. As part of our commitment to improving our performance to better meet the expectations of shareholders and customers, we continue to evaluate ways to improve in several areas of the Company’s operations. It may take some time to realize the benefits of these efforts and the platform transition that we are undertaking, but we continue to believe that RIM has the right set of strengths and capabilities to maintain a leading role in the mobile communications industry.
RIM will host a conference call with analysts at 5 pm, Eastern time, and you can catch it here.
RIM shares are down 43 cents, or almost 3%, at $14.70 77 cents, or 5%, at $14.36 $1.05, or almost 7%, to $14.08 in late trading.
Update: In a note to clients out just a moment ago, RBC Capital‘s Mike Abramsky writes that the Q4 revenue outlook is weaker than the $4.8 billion to $5.1 billion he had been modeling. The BlackBerry shipment forecast of 11 million to 12 million units was below his own estimate for 13 million to 14 million units.
He concludes, “the BlackBerry 7 product cycle is diminishing early, and international momentum is slowing — with BlackBerry 10 launches not coming soon enough to offset.” He acknowledges the rise in subscribers was positive, as was the company’s free cash flow generation.
www.rim.com/investors/events/index.shtml
No comments:
Post a Comment