Boston, MA 10/14/2013 (wallstreetpr) – The buyout deal of wilting BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) has no clear shape for now with late entry of co-founder Mike Lazaridis. The lackluster smartphone company continued its slide Friday, losing 1.59% to close down $8.07, on a day that saw the company trade at less than half of its daily average share volume.
Now the company’s co-founder way back in 1984 is offering to give life to what is “his”. Lazaridis, the new kid on the block in the BBRY buyout, controls 8% of the company’s shares. This is less than 9.9% stake held by Fairfax Financial which is seeking to buyout BBRY at $4.7 billion. A big announcement is expected from Fairfax next month around 4th in connection with the buyout.
If the deal between BBRY and Fairfax doesn’t go through, BBRY will pay its biggest single shareholder $0.30 per share or $157 million. However, in a “deal case”, BBRY will make $0.50 breakup fees to Fairfax, or approximately $262.
However, Lazaridis has invited Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to help with the exploration of his bid to takeover the company he founded with a childhood friend.
Other companies such as Intel, Cisco, Apple, Microsoft and Google have too expressed interest in buying BBRY. However, most of these bidders appear to be keen on just taking the company in parts such as its patent licenses and certain business segments. And almost all of these companies are now interested in BBRY’s employees, if they cannot get the company itself.
BBRY has been sliding into the bottom of its financial status, recently writing off up to $965 million in failed BlackBerry smartphone 10. No amount of restructuring and cost cutting seem to be helping the Ontario-Waterloo company that was once the giant of smartphone tech industry. Today, BBRY can only envy what Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics are doing in the smarphone market. For investment purposes, BBRY is a no go zone for now.
