RIM Bites the Dust?

choi

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Financial Times (FT) yesterday commented "problems at RIM are deadly serious. If it cannot get better products to market faster, it could disappear. * * * RIM is on trial for its life, whereas Nokia is already on the gallows, waiting for a last-minute reprieve."

Today Wall Street Journal reported further fallout, a day after RIM's announcement:
Phred Dvorak, Stuart Weinberg and Anupreeta Dasa, Investors Sour on BlackBerry. WSJ, Kune 18, 2011
("Shares in RIM plunged 21% [Friday, June 17] to their lowest level in five years")  

The following are two commentary (date in print).

(1) Rolfe Winkler, BlackBerry Still not Ripe. WSJ, June 18, 2011 (title in print).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303823104576391922420551748.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
("The BlackBerry maker pushed back the release of its newest handset to later this summer, too late for the crucial back-to-school selling season")

(2) Research in Motion. Lex Column, FT, June 17, 2011.

The text:

"Frostbite is setting in. The two mobile phone makers headquartered up by the Arctic Circle, Canada’s Research in Motion and Finland’s Nokia, are in trouble. Both are losing share and pricing power because they cannot seem to release innovative products at a pace to keep up with Apple, or the various manufacturers using Google’s Android operating system.

"But investors should notice the differeces as well as the similarities. Consider the numbers. In the first calendar quarter, unit volumes at RIM grew over 40 per cent from the prior year. At Nokia, device volumes were flat. The fact that RIM's average revenue per device was three times Nokia's is reflected by operatings margins over 20 per cent, versus single-digits at Nokia. RIM's guidance for the quarter about to be announced was unsettling. While volumes will be up by a fifth from last year, they will drop sequentially, and earnings wull be down slightly year over year. Nokia's guidance, on the other hand, was terrifying: prices and volumes down enough to cut operating profit to roughly nothing.

"It is surprising, given this, that RIM gets the lower valuation of the two. It trades at three times prospective earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, against 4.5 times for Nokia. There is no doubt that the problems at RIM are deadly serious. If it cannot get better products to market faster, it could disappear. But RIM's recent results show that it has a far greater cushion of profitability than Nokia and therefore has more time for corrective action. RIM is on trial for its life, whereas Nokia is already on the gallows, waiting for a last-minute reprieve. That is an important difference which should be reflected in current valuations.

My comment: 兵敗如山倒. A week ago, Taiwan HTC released a preliminary sale result that was invigorating. The quarterly result will come out soon.

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