BlackBerry is scheduled to report earnings on Thursday, March 28. The consensus is a loss of $0.32 vs. a profit of $0.80 a year ago. The revenue consensus number is $2.84 billion. The consensus is for BlackBerry to lose money in every quarter in FY14.
The earnings will be meaningless because it is a transition time for BlackBerry. The earnings data will simply not tell us enough about the sales of Z10 and the adoption of BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10. The stock will move mostly based on projections, however the projections will be controversial. BlackBerry has had a lousy record of meeting its projections.
The following pieces of information will be of specific interest.
- Gross margin on Z10
- Projected gross margin on Z10 for upcoming quarters
- Average projected selling price of Q10
- Projected gross margin on Q10
- The pace of decline in consumer service revenues
- New projected revenues from BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10
The controversy will continue because on one side there will be analysts who will continue to contend that Z10 and Q10 will be hard pressed to gain over 5% market share. I am in this camp. On the other side there will be analysts who believe that BlackBerry will hit a home run and capture more than 5% market share.
Yesterday I wrote in Forbes that if it was based only on handsets, BlackBerry stock should slide into single digits. I also wrote that another key element is the revenues from services to enterprises. Most analysts agree that as Z10 and Q10 replace older BlackBerry models, service revenues related to consumers will fall off a cliff. There is a wide disagreement about the enterprise service revenues..Read more at Forbes
