BlackBerry shares drop despite better-than-expected earnings report

SECURITY

Shares in BlackBerry Ltd. dropped in after-hours trading today despite the company delivering better-than-expected earnings results.

For the quarter ended Nov. 30, BlackBerry reported a loss of five cents per share on revenue of $184 million, compared with a loss of 23 cents per share on revenue of $218 million in the same quarter last year. Analysts had been predicting a loss of seven cents per share on revenue of $173.6 million.

BlackBerry’s Internet of Things division revenue in the quarter came in at $43 million and its cybersecurity division delivered $128 million in revenue. Licensing and other revenue rounded out the total with $13 million.

Highlights in the quarter included BMW Group entering a multiyear agreement to use BlackBerry QNX technology to develop autonomous driving functions in multiple makes and models. BlackBerry QNX also joined forces with Google LLC and Qualcomm Inc. to reduce developer friction and time to market when virtualizing Android Automotive OS alongside safety-critical applications on the QNX Hypervision.

On the cybersecurity side, BlackBerry partnered with Exabeam Inc. to expand access to telemetry data from hundreds of network devices as part of its enhanced BlackBerry Guard-managed extended detection and response service.

“This quarter, BlackBerry delivered solid sequential billings and revenue growth for both the IoT and cybersecurity businesses, beating expectations for the second consecutive quarter,” John Chen, executive chairman and chief executive officer of BlackBerry, said in a statement. “We also beat expectations on earnings, despite the ongoing investment to drive future top-line growth.”

BlackBerry did not release outlook estimates for the next quarter, leaving the details to its investor call. Notes from the call were not available at the time of writing.

But investors didn’t appear to like what they heard. Despite the better-than-expected quarterly results, BlackBerry shares dropped in after-hours trading after initially increasing as much as 3% after the earnings report was published, though they later regained a bit to a decline of 1.5%. The timing of the later drop would suggest that the outlook shared in the investor call may have been lower than expected.

Photo: BlackBerry