RIM Hires Goldman Sachs?

[r.speziale]

RIM stock up on talk BlackBerry maker hired Goldman

(Reuters) - Shares in Research In Motion climbed nearly 4 percent on Thursday on market speculation the BlackBerry maker had hired investment bank Goldman Sachs to explore strategic options.

RIM has been the target of a steady stream of takeover talk as its market valuation has crawled along at multi-year lows amid product delays and profit warnings.

Analysts have largely downplayed the prospects of a sale, saying no natural buyers exist and that current management is focused on turning around the company's fortunes.

"It's up on Goldman, but I wouldn't put too much on that," said one trader who declined to be identified.

RIM stock jumped sharply in September on reports that activist investor Carl Icahn might take a stake, and again a week later on talk it had hired an investment bank.

It jumped again in December after Reuters reported that Amazon.com and other potential buyers had considered a bid.

RIM was not immediately available to comment. It typically declines to comment on rumor or speculation. Goldman was also not immediately available.

The stock was steady at $16.05, a 2.8 percent increase, just after midday on Nasdaq. In Toronto, the shares were up 2.7 percent at C$16.35 after rising as high as C$16.63.

The stock has lost 75 percent of its value in the past year.

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp in Toronto and Nadia Damouni in New York; editing by Rob Wilson)

[the_sleuth]

Well, RIM might be up 4% today but it is still way down from 3 months ago and the chart looks uglier further back. This is just another rumor of the vultures circling.

[meske]

This doesn't always mean a sale... this could also be exploring more strategic purchases. RIM is still a HUGE company with a decent amount of cash. Their public image may be tarnished a bit right now, but there far from out of business.

[OMGitworks]

Originally Posted by meske

This doesn't always mean a sale... this could also be exploring more strategic purchases. RIM is still a HUGE company with a decent amount of cash. Their public image may be tarnished a bit right now, but there far from out of business.

RIMM doesn't have enough cash nor is its stock worth enough (anymore- thanks Jim and Mike) to explore any purchase of the size a firm like Goldman would be brought in to look at. Clearly RIMM would be sold, merged, taken over or otherwise disposed of to maximize shareholder value in any deal Goldman might suggest... If this rumor is true RIMM is almost certainly the target and not the acquirer. While QNX may ultimately work out, it is also pretty clear that RIM is not very good at integrating companies when it purchases them.

[Thunderbuck]

We'll have to see. It may be that RIM will try to tough it out through the management review before deciding one way or another.

If they play this right, we might see a little more short-term upside. Worth remembering though that we're now looking at about a 30% bounce off the lows, so the market is likely pricing in the management change to some extent.

[menaknow]

Originally Posted by OMGitworks

While QNX may ultimately work out, it is also pretty clear that RIM is not very good at integrating companies when it purchases them.

How did you get to the conclusion of RIM not being very good at integrating companies when it purchases them?

One of those companies was rumored to have rebuilt the OS 7 browser on BB phones, and they did a great job.

TAT did a pretty nice job with enhancements to UI affects for the playbook.

But to the point of Goldman Sachs, perhaps they were brought in with the simple question "What can we do to increase our share price"...

[missing_K-W]

i would imagine this is a defensive play, as opposed to being in a selling position...As well to increase share price

[ThePoisonBerry]

Awesome, looks like buy shares at the $12 low was a good decision.

[Thunderbuck]

I can think of two other reasons RIM might approach Golden Slacks that don't involve an outright buyout:

1) Maybe looking at a bond issue?

2) Looking at selling a component.

Regardless, looks like Friday's going to be a good day. Bought at about $16 on the way down, I'm back in the black (for the moment at least )

[OMGitworks]

I suspect the board is bringing them in to cover their a$$es after the pathetic 75% drop in stock price over the last year. They will get Goldman to conclude that they should remain a stand alone company and Jim and Mike will have cemented their positions and they will move on. Same thing with the token, year long look at corporate governance they are wrapping up. As a side benfit they will getba temporary stock bump. But be careful, when the news comes out that they are not selling out, the price will come back in.

[OMGitworks]

Originally Posted by menaknow

How did you get to the conclusion of RIM not being very good at integrating companies when it purchases them?

One of those companies was rumored to have rebuilt the OS 7 browser on BB phones, and they did a great job.

TAT did a pretty nice job with enhancements to UI affects for the playbook.

But to the point of Goldman Sachs, perhaps they were brought in with the simple question "What can we do to increase our share price"...

TAT has done OK. OS 7 is a short term, stop gap project. QNX integration has been very slow and the PB release and now the delay of the new phones is sort of a disaster. No way to sugar coat the QNX problems and how it has hurt RiM. In the end it may end up being RIMs savior but this past year it has almost killed the company waiting for the integration.

[sosumi11]

Originally Posted by menaknow

One of those companies was rumored to have rebuilt the OS 7 browser on BB phones, and they did a great job.

Not much of a "re-build".

WebKit was originally derived by Apple Inc. from the Konqueror browser's KHTML software library for use as the engine of Safari web browser, and has now been further developed by individuals from KDE, Apple Inc., Nokia, Google, Bitstream, Torch Mobile, Samsung, Igalia, and others. Mac OS X, Windows, GNU/Linux, and some other Unix-like operating systems are supported by the project.

WebKit's WebCore and JavaScriptCore components are available under the GNU Lesser General Public License, and the rest of WebKit is available under a BSD-style license.

On June 7, 2005, Safari developer Dave Hyatt announced on his weblog that Apple was open-sourcing WebKit (previously, only WebCore and JavaScriptCore were open source) and opening up access to WebKit's CVS tree and the bug Database tool. This was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference 2005 by Apple Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Bertrand Serlet.

[teeuwen]

Stock goes up

Stock goes down

When your rim its bad either way i suppose!

[maam]

All I can say is they better not sell eh!!

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[siausin]

Very interesting place full of blackberry lovers and haters....Every time someone tried to put in some positive words for RIM, some how some shallow minded people, with the benefits of hindsight the mis-steps RIM had,, seem just can't stand reading anything positive about RIM and come in to throw stones on RIM on what we already known and heard many times over...

Sent from my BlackBerry 9810 using Tapatalk