[kellyweng88]

So what does everybody think will happen for tomorrow.

Are we thinking a drop or flat?

[FeitaInc]

I’m kind of happy really. Perhaps not a huge beat, but hey..

They broke out Cylance in their reporting structure, which I think is smart (provided we’ll see growth that is). The jump in revenue from 4 to 52 million y/y makes me think that isn’t an apples to apples comparison.

Edit: Given the times, I’m just kind of happy when things doesn’t completely implode. (And it really helps not having prepared for the call and having expectations for the revenue number. )

[FeitaInc]

So what does everybody think will happen for tomorrow.

Are we thinking a drop or flat?

I’ll go out on a limb and say slightly up.

[Seadog83]

What the hell is this "Cylance is better than competitors because:"

"...We're the best".

Did a child write this?

[FeitaInc]

Intune compatibility. Did not see that coming.

[shanhetao]

disappointed that Chen did not give any clue of growth this coming year.

[dusdal]

The quarter was very reliant on Licensing and Cylance.

[dusdal]

What was the 30 million WFH referring to? was the number of new licenses? or future sales if they stay on?

[b121]

I think the $30MM was an increase to their pipeline; however, he characterized it as strong. Hopefully they can convert most of it.

[_dimi_]

The quarter was very reliant on Licensing and Cylance.

The entire year was reliant on licensing... they would be nowhere without it. How much did Cylance grow QoQ? So now licensing and QNX go down... and they have ESS and Cylance to partly (!) offset. But analysts won't find anything positive to say, because quite frankly, JC is a cheap guy, not willing to invest in growth. An example:

JC mentioned that AtHoc is doing quite well with the US Federal Government - after someone asked about it. JC : "But there's a competing company out there called Everbridge who are targetting local governments and they're doing well. So I'd like to do the same."

.................... what an idiot

[dalinxz]

What was the 30 million WFH referring to? was the number of new licenses? or future sales if they stay on?

Don't forget they were giving out licenses for free for work from home and Cylance heavily discounted for the last two quarters. Bad sights from all angles. Dead weight stock, final capitulation, no more for me. This is junk, headed to bankruptcy or Watsa takeunder. Unethical POS trash Canadian company. Will never invest in another Canadian fraud company again.

[dalinxz]

I think the $30MM was an increase to their pipeline; however, he characterized it as strong. Hopefully they can convert most of it.

We all know it will end up being 30MM email signups to the cylance newsletter not sales.

[shanhetao]

The entire year was reliant on licensing... they would be nowhere without it. How much did Cylance grow QoQ? So now licensing and QNX go down... and they have ESS and Cylance to partly (!) offset. But analysts won't find anything positive to say, because quite frankly, JC is a cheap guy, not willing to invest in growth. An example:

JC mentioned that AtHoc is doing quite well with the US Federal Government - after someone asked about it. JC : "But there's a competing company out there called Everbridge who are targetting local governments and they're doing well. So I'd like to do the same."

.................... what an idiot

I do not think cylance grow q2q. My estimate show it is decline. The most frustrating thing is Chen did NOT give any guidance. I do not understand why Crowdstrike could give guidance, why Chen can Not give any guidance on cylance. Similar for enterprise or AtHoc. That's not a good sign.

[Seadog83]

All in all, I felt a good call, on mediocre numbers, but close to full marks given the circumstances. Despite Chen's bumbling awkwardness like he was reading a script that he was seeing for the first time.

I was very relieved to learn the shortfall was largely due to BTS having 2 large contracts pulled out due to the virus, which I didn't think would have had an impact by that point, but (thankfully?) it did. A far better explanation than the business itself faltering. QNX is one of the more resilient gems with very long term contracts and lead times, so I'm less worried that the revenue is gone forever, contrasted with endpoint management or whatever it's called now, 6 months back. Further, the fact that there were continued design wins bode well for the future of BTS once all this has blown over.

Licensing continues to be the wild unknown horse. Saved us once again, I'm almost scared for the day the dark clouds align and pair a bad licensing quarter with a bad everything else quarter.

So, a little progress, nothing momentous, some stuff in the pipeline, but nothing to really knock anyone's socks off any time soon. 3 more months, then check back in I guess after the stock has shed another 2/3rds it's value for no particular reason...

[EchoTango]

Just got off the ER call and thought it went relatively well. I was very surprised to see the GAAP EPS loss expand to $.07 but I think it might be good news. If my early understanding is correct, I think most of the loss is related to a massive retirement of the convertible debt which means the balance sheet will now reflect little or no long term debt. So, in the short term this looks bad, long term it makes the remaining ~$350M actual positive cash without any impairments or commitments.

In general I thought they had a great 4th quarter with healthy Q-to-Q revenue growth. Plus they are now officially a $1B+ company for the first time in several years, while a somewhat pyrrhic achievement, it's one more step forward from the dark days of the past few years when their survival was seriously in doubt. ESS bounced back nicely and looks to be out of the woods. While there are short term pandemic challenges ahead, I think some products will see some short term higher demand while other parts of the business be directly negatively affected. However, I sure wouldn't want to be an automotive company right now.

All-in-all I think a positive performance, although there will be the doomers (I have been one of those at times) who will point to the small cracks and find fault. Today I will take a breath and say congratulations to Blackberry and best of luck for the next fiscal year !

[_dimi_]

Just got off the ER call and thought it went relatively well. I was very surprised to see the GAAP EPS loss expand to $.07 but I think it might be good news. If my early understanding is correct, I think most of the loss is related to a massive retirement of the convertible debt which means the balance sheet will now reflect little or no long term debt. So, in the short term this looks bad, long term it makes the remaining ~$350M actual positive cash without any impairments or commitments.

In general I thought they had a great 4th quarter with healthy Q-to-Q revenue growth. Plus they are now officially a $1B+ company for the first time in several years, while a somewhat pyrrhic achievement, it's one more step forward from the dark days of the past few years when their survival was seriously in doubt. ESS bounced back nicely and looks to be out of the woods. While there are short term pandemic challenges ahead, I think some products will see some short term higher demand while other parts of the business be directly negatively affected. However, I sure wouldn't want to be an automotive company right now.

All-in-all I think a positive performance, although there will be the doomers (I have be one of those at times) who will point to the small cracks and find fault. Today I will take a breath and say congratulations to Blackberry and best of luck for the next fiscal year !

Huh? Loss widened from .06 (previous quarter) to .07 (this quarter)? And JC mentioned that they will be retiring the convertible debt.. as in this fiscal year?!

[_dimi_]

So their loss widened due to an Impairment of goodwill (with regards to BBM for consumers) of 22 million USD.

And all of the debt is still on the balance sheet.

[The Big Picture]

after market down 10% though. I think it will get ugly tmr.

[EchoTango]

So their loss widened due to an Impairment of goodwill (with regards to BBM for consumers) of 22 million USD.

And all of the debt is still on the balance sheet.

I don't believe it has anything to do with the GAAP EPS loss. I think that is related to the debenture redemption.

Goodwill is an intangible number and is only carried on the books as a fair market value placeholder. This particular impairment was a "write down" on the value of Google contract which was retired due to the sunsetting of BBM consumer.

It has no impact to the company financials, other than in determining a theoretical value for the whole company.

[_dimi_]

In general I thought they had a great 4th quarter with healthy Q-to-Q revenue growth. Plus they are now officially a $1B+ company for the first time in several years, while a somewhat pyrrhic achievement, it's one more step forward from the dark days of the past few years when their survival was seriously in doubt. ESS bounced back nicely and looks to be out of the woods. While there are short term pandemic challenges ahead, I think some products will see some short term higher demand while other parts of the business be directly negatively affected. However, I sure wouldn't want to be an automotive company right now.

All-in-all I think a positive performance, although there will be the doomers (I have be one of those at times) who will point to the small cracks and find fault. Today I will take a breath and say congratulations to Blackberry and best of luck for the next fiscal year !

(in millions - QoQ)

IOT : from 145 to 127
Cylance : from 40 to 43
Licensing : from 77 to 108

Licensing revenue in Q4 rose at the expense of Q1 licensing revenue - and will likely drop to 250-270 million this fiscal year from 328 million. Cylance had 151 million in total revenue which means that they paid over 9 times sales for this company, excluding bonuses. And now ESS is going to 'save the day' apparently, after dragging down the company for over a year.

I understand that JC is a master at numbers, at buying time, at staging a turnaround... but imho he is not good at growing a business. He's not a sales person. He needs to be on the BOD and that's it.

[_dimi_]

I don't believe it has anything to do with the GAAP EPS loss. I think that is related to the debenture redemption.

Goodwill is an intangible number and is only carried on the books as a fair market value placeholder. This particular impairment was a "write down" on the value of Google contract which was retired due to the sunsetting of BBM consumer.

It has no impact to the company financials, other than in determining a theoretical value for the whole company.

Check their GAAP income statement.... it has *almost* everything to do with their GAAP EPS loss.

[_dimi_]

https://www.blackberry.com/content/d...ion-Q4FY20.pdf

[dalinxz]

(in millions - QoQ)

IOT : from 145 to 127
Cylance : from 40 to 43
Licensing : from 77 to 108

Licensing revenue in Q4 rose at the expense of Q1 licensing revenue - and will likely drop to 250-270 million this fiscal year from 328 million. Cylance had 151 million in total revenue which means that they paid over 9 times sales for this company, excluding bonuses. And now ESS is going to 'save the day' apparently, after dragging down the company for over a year.

I understand that JC is a master at numbers, at buying time, at staging a turnaround... but imho he is not good at growing a business. He's not a sales person. He needs to be on the BOD and that's it.

Chen shouldn't be anywhere near this company, living thousands of miles from the office and selling assets at fire sale prices in hype markets selling vapourware to shareholders and market while writing off hundreds of millions to his name. Fraud in plain sight.

[app_Developer]

I haven’t listened to the call yet, but Cylance seems to be a disappointment? They put a lot of cash into that, plus what they continue to spend there each quarter. It’s also the only thing I see at BB with a chance of driving significant growth (and they must agree else they wouldn’t be investing so much cash into it!)

[Seadog83]

I haven’t listened to the call yet, but Cylance seems to be a disappointment? They put a lot of cash into that, plus what they continue to spend there each quarter. It’s also the only thing I see at BB with a chance of driving significant growth (and they must agree else they wouldn’t be investing so much cash into it!)

They talked a fair bit about "being the best" and offering things that no one else did, and lots of hope for the future blah blah blah. I'm just curious when these platitudes will actually result in something we can take to the bank. CRWD managed to transition from the private to public sphere with only a blip in growth, which you could even attribute simply to scale.

Cylance on the other hand has really brought nothing to the table, despite being a year in. Secondly, and not just with cylance, but JC needs to figure out his significant figures. Saying a reiterated estimate of 1.1b revs last Q for the year, led to considerable confusion, because no one knew when he said 1.1, whether he meant 1.100B, or 1.1 +/-.049b, the former being a guidance cut, the latter being a reiteration and encompassing of previous.

Same things here $40m to $43m could literally mean quarterly growth of just over $2m (40.4999 to 42.50001m), or $4m (39.5001 to 43.49999), which mean 5 to 10% quarterly growth, extrapolated annually (^4) meaning growth somewhere between 21% to 47%. Much like his comment about the 1.1b in revs for the year leaving you to fill in the blanks, there's enough blank space in there that it encompasses from solid miss to solid beat.

Finally I'm not sure why the stock is getting punished *yet again*. If it were still the same $7 stock of 3 months ago fine. You had your expectations, it was a mixed bag but even giving the good stuff a pass, you can punish it on the slight rev miss. That isn't what happened. It's *already* been punished to the tune of 50%, exactly in anticipation of a miss due to the virus stuff. The market was saying by virtue of slashing the price that it lowered expectations. Well presumably it met those lowered expectations, so why all the hate now? Or conversely, if they felt the same numbers were still reasonable and achievable, why did they feel it was warranted to slash the stock price in half, if they truly believed that the expectations from 3 months ago were still perfectly sensible? It's like it's being punished twice for the exact same thing. Corona virus expected to have an impact on numbers. Lets kill the price. Fine, but then when the virus does in fact have an impact on numbers, like you were expecting it to, and the whole reason why you sold it off in the first place, shouldn't that be reason enough to leave it alone?