Boston, MA 01/09/2013 (wallstreetpr) – BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) is set to receive another injunction of $250 million from its largest investor Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. Fairfax will be purchasing convertible debt worth $250 million in the smartphone maker.
A Knight In Shinning Armor?
Fairfax is turning out to be a Knight in Shinning Armor for Blackberry. The Prem Watsa lead investment group has already subscribed to $250 million worth of the convertible debt earlier. Incidentally, Fairfax had lead plans to take over Blackberry and make it a private company. The deal fell through at the last minute. Blackberry then replaced the CEO with John Chen as interim CEO and Chairman and instead of pursuing take over offers, started concentrating on turning a new leaf. John Chen is considered a master in this; everyone remembers his stint at Sybase.
BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) has been scouting buyers for some of its businesses but has not been successful till now. Many companies had shown interest in either the whole company or some parts of it, but these do not seem to have materialized.
Foxconn Deal to the rescue
As part of the restructuring process, Blackberry has inked a deal with the Chinese manufacturer Foxconn. Foxconn will manufacture Blackberry handsets for a period of five years. This would take the load of inventories out of Blackberry’s shoulders.
Blackberry is also said to be concentrating on the traditional keypad models after failing in the touch screen ones.
John Chen’s Vision
John Chen wants the company to focus on its enterprise solutions. He has been spring cleaning the company and several key executives have put in their papers. New joiners are from enterprise focused companies. However, Blackberry has not been able to find suitors for some of its non core assets. It has already rolled out its iconic BBM over other operating systems – Android and iOS. This has been downloaded millions of time. Being free, investors are wondering how Blackberry will be able to monetize this.
Till such time, it is still wait and watch for BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY)
