Boston, MA 10/23/2013 (wallstreetpr) – The Intellectual Property (IP) of the beleaguered Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) seems to be the only part of the company that is till full of life. This can be seen in the manner in which potential buyers are and financiers are warming up to BBRY’s patents.
The late entrant into the BBRY buyout arena is Collar Capital, a financier that is said to be in talks with several bidders for a team-up bid to offer BBRY either in part or in whole. And in part, the company’s IP is on the top cards.
Even in the face of tepid economic times for its products, BBRY has continued to build intellectual property hoard and amass patents. And these are now seen as strengths to keep its value up even as inventories fail so that it can attract higher bids.
Coller has interest in the intellectual property business whereby it seeks them out, buys them and then sells them again. In this case it’s seeking about 10% of BBRY’s patents, but as a financier for the bidders. Among buyers eyeing BBRY and its IP portfolio are Lenovo, Google, Intel, Cisco, Samsung Electronics and many others. It is only BBRY’s largest shareholder Fairfax Financial Holdings that has signed a tentative deal to takeover the smartphone maker for about $4.7 billion, a bid that has been widely seen as too small for a company which until recently was valued at roughly $87 billion.
If Coller finds bidding partners in the BBRY IP buyout deal, it would offer the upfront financial, but also share royalties from the licensed patents, sources privy to the financier with offices in Hong Kong, London and New York have revealed.
So far, it is reported that BBRY’s IP assets account for up to 20% of its total value. This typically means that the company’s licensing business bears a lot of financial weight. This weight has been proposed to be between $1.6 and $3 billion.
