BlackBerry cancels earnings call after buyout offer
Struggling handset maker still plans to reveal its second-quarter financial results but doesn't want to talk about them in light of offer to take the company private.
BlackBerry plans to release its second-quarter financial results on Friday but doesn't want to discuss them.
The struggling handset maker, which announced last week that it expected to lose nearly $1 billion in the fiscal second quarter, announced Wednesday it has chosen to cancel the customary conference call discussion in deference for a buyout offer to take the company private. BlackBerry revealed Monday that it had entered into a deal with a consortium led by Fairfax Financial Holdings that valued the company at $4.7 billion.
"In light of the letter of intent agreement between BlackBerry and Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited that was signed and announced on Monday, September 23, BlackBerry has cancelled its second quarter earnings conference call and webcast that had previously been scheduled for Friday, September 27 at 8:00 a.m.," the company said in a statement.
BlackBerry said it would release further details about its second-quarter financial performance next week as part of its Management's Discussion and Analysis financial filings.
It's been a rough decline for the BlackBerry. Once seen as a status symbol among the corporate elite, BlackBerry failed to move past the legacy operating system that got it into the smartphone game and quickly fell behind Apple's iPhone and Google's Android operating system. After hitting a high of nearly $145 in 2008, the company's stock lost a staggering 94 percent of its value.
Under the proposed deal, shareholders would receive $9 a share in cash, a slight premium over the $8.23 at which the stock was trading when the buyout proposal was announced.
Adding insult to injury, T-Mobile reportedly plans to pull its stock of BlackBerry phones from its US brick-and-mortar stores. BlackBerry phones have not sold particularly well with shop customers and "keeping stock in the retail distribution system was inefficient," the mobile carrier's executive vice president for corporate services, David Carey, told Reuters.
(Via AllThingsD)