A couple of months ago it was rumored that BlackBerry could be acquired by Fairfax Financial, but as it turns out the investment company decided to inject BlackBerry with $1 billion in funding rather than buying it outright as BlackBerry was not able to meet the $9 per share requirement. Presumably the $1 billion investment would be spent on a variety of matters ranging from paying off debts and investing in R&D to help further the company’s hardware and software offerings, and while to the average Joe $1 billion is a lot of money, it is not a lot for a company like BlackBerry, at least according to a Bernstein analyst, Pierre Ferragu.
According to Ferragu, it would seem as though BlackBerry might have already spent $800 million of the $1 billion investment, although we’re not particularly sure on what. Ferragu states, “As we expected, Fairfax’s attempt to take out Blackberry has failed, driving the stock to all time lows. We believe the near term will be very challenging, and we model almost 800m burnt in this quarter alone.” We can’t say we are too surprised to find that BlackBerry has spent a good deal of the $1 billion investment already. After all the letter of intent signed by BlackBerry a few months ago had the deal pegged at $4.7 billion, almost five times what Fairfax decided to give the Canadian company.
Could this mean that BlackBerry could be facing more financial difficulties in the future? It’s hard to tell but the recent departure of BlackBerry executives definitely can be good for morale.
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