WATERLOO, Ont. -- BlackBerry executive chairman and chief executive John Chen is turning his attention to growth for the struggling company, which has been slashing costs to survive.
Chen said, in the short term, that means growing its software and services business including its popular BBM service, and embedded software like QNX.
"We just need to make sure that we do it in a well-paced manner and don't want to get too much ahead of ourselves," Chen told a conference call on Friday with financial analysts after the company reported better than expected results.
"I'm very pleased with the fact that the company's now back in execution mode," he said.
BlackBerry Ltd. (TSX:BB), which has been restructuring and cutting costs at a torrid pace, reported a fourth-quarter loss of US$423 million or 80 cents per share, compared with a profit of $98 million or 19 cents per diluted share a year ago.
However, excluding several one-time items, BlackBerry says it reported an adjusted loss from continuing operations of $42 million or eight cents per share for the quarter.
The average analyst estimate compiled by Thomson Reuters had been for a loss of 55 cents per share for the quarter.
Revenue fell to $976 million for the three months ended March 1 compared with $2.68 billion a year ago. Analysts had expected about $1.1 billion for the latest quarter.
Chen, who took over late last year, said the company's normalized use of cash from operations was now 30 per cent lower compared with last quarter.
"I think the numbers show we are about a quarter ahead of schedule at this point," he said.
In its outlook, BlackBerry says it is targeting break even its cash flow results by the end of its 2015 financial year.
The revenue breakdown for the quarter included about 37 per cent from hardware, 56 per cent for services and seven per cent for software and other revenue.
The company said it recognized hardware revenue on approximately 1.3 million BlackBerry smartphones in the quarter.
BlackBerry had $2.7 billion in cash, cash equivalents, short-term and long-term investments of March 1.
Earlier this week, BlackBerry said it was about to launch an update to its popular BlackBerry Messenger chat service that it hopes will see some revenue growth through sponsorships with brand names, and a new BBM store that deals in virtual goods.
BBM's user base has grown to more than 85 million since the chat service became available to iPhones and Android devices.
BlackBerry is looking to start a virtual store that will heavily promote a line of virtual stickers that can be used in messaging to convey emotions.
The company hopes to expand the stickers -- which are popular in Asia -- to include partners that will either share revenues from sales or pay BlackBerry to give out stickers that promote a product.
The company also hopes to turn BBM into a mobile financial services tool that will allow users to link their bank account to their phone for easier payments.
The company has been cutting costs and restructuring its business in a bid to stay alive including a plan to eliminate of about 40 per cent of the company's workforce.
Last week, Blackberry announced it had signed a deal to sell a majority of its Canadian real estate holdings -- more than three million square feet of space and vacant lands -- and lease back a portion.
The deal followed the sale in December of a handful of buildings to the University of Waterloo for $41 million under an agreement that would also allow the company to lease back some of them.
And earlier this month, BlackBerry sold its U.S. headquarters in Irving, Texas, to Brookfield Property Group for an undisclosed amount. The company plans to lease back at least part of the six-building location.
For its full financial year, BlackBerry reported a loss of $5.87 billion or $11.18 per diluted share on $6.81 billion in revenue. That compared with a loss of $646 million or $1.23 per diluted share on $11.07 billion in revenue the prior year.
On the Toronto Stock Exchange, shares in Blackberry were up 5.12 per cent or 51 cents to 10.47 in mid-morning trading.WATERLOO, Ont. -- BlackBerry chief executive John Chen is meeting with some of the smartphone company's biggest customers, from government agencies to the world's biggest banks, in hopes of mending relationships neglected when it rolled out refreshed devices last year.
"We should have talked to the customers more when we launched new technology," Chen said Friday after the release of BlackBerry's latest quarterly financial results.
"It is my opinion that we didn't do enough of it."
Chen treads carefully in talking about BlackBerry's past after being hired last November to turn the faltering company around. But he says lessons have been learned and the company is already trying to correct some of its missteps.
On Friday, the fourth-quarter results showed some of that progress.
BlackBerry's posted a loss of US$423 million or 80 cents per share for the three months ended March 1, a vast improvement from the multibillion-dollar loss it booked in the third-quarter, but still below the $98 million profit, or 19 cents per diluted share, posted a year earlier.
Excluding several one-time items, BlackBerry reported an adjusted loss from continuing operations of $42 million or eight cents per share. The average analyst estimate compiled by Thomson Reuters had been for a deeper loss of 55 cents per share.
However, revenue fell below analyst predictions, coming in at $976 million compared with $2.68 billion a year ago. Analysts had expected about $1.1 billion and BlackBerry shares closed down more than six per cent, or 65 cents, at C$9.31 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Chen indicated there was still plenty of work ahead in turning the company around. "There's so many things that need to be fixed," he told reporters at the company's headquarters in Waterloo, Ont.
As part of its effort to lower costs and get some value from its assets, the company has decided to sell a majority of its Canadian real estate holdings to various buyers.
Some went to the University of Waterloo under an agreement that would also allow the company to lease back select properties, while others were sold to a buyer that has yet to be identified.
The property sales raised questions about whether BlackBerry's long-term future in Waterloo was in doubt, but Chen said he intends to keep the company's headquarters in the city and maintain its QNX division in Ottawa.
"I don't have any plans to move out of Canada," he said.
BlackBerry will unveil more keyboard smartphones over the next 18 months designed primarily for its corporate customers. Chen hopes the company will be able to market to them through new sales teams that cater to major sectors like government, financial services and health care clients.
He also hopes to hire more research and development engineers.
"It's very important, so we need to start focusing on that while we finish off the tail end of our cost-reduction plans," he said.
Other changes are in the works as Chen continues to reorganize the company with a goal of reducing costs. That plan includes the elimination of about 40 per cent of the company's workforce before the end of May.
When he took the leadership role last November, Chen had to immediately get a tighter control on expenses, he said, because surveying the problems at the troubled company sequentially would've taken too long.
"You cannot ever cut yourself to glory," he said.
"That transition was one of the most difficult things in the beginning."
