BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY)(TSE:BB) short interest surged 12.44% in November totaling to 111,375,334 as of November 28 compared to 99,051,192 shares on November 14. Average daily volume for the same period dropped by 4,606,924 to 12,206,992 shares from 16,813,916 shares. Short interest in BlackBerry has surged more than 22 million shares, or about 26% from the settlement date 7/31/2014.
‘Rocky road’ ahead
Nomura analyst believe that BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY)(TSE:BB) has a “rocky road to recovery.” Analyst Stuart Jeffrey has assigned Neutral rating on the stock, but lowered the price from $10.60 to $10.30 per share in a research note on Monday.
“Near-term estimates continue to miss expectations, making it hard to confidently project a bottoming out in revenue trends,” noted analyst.
Some of factors to focus on the stock that caught the eyes of Jeffries are better earnings and slew of new product platform, and transformation of the company from a struggling handset manufacturer to a vigorous supplier of enterprise mobility management solutions.
Canadian smartphone maker has recently launched the platforms that will take forward the software revenues. Also, it is not easy to estimate the impact according to Jeffrey. He added, “[We] need to see a marked acceleration in the market-wide adoption of enterprise mobility management solutions to justify significant upside in fair value.”
Analysts take on BlackBerry
Recently, a number of analysts have assigned ratings to BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY)(TSE:BB). JP Morgan maintained Neutral ratings on the stock and assigned price target of $10 in a research note on December 22nd. Nomura analysts, also, reiterated Neutral rating on the stock, assigning it a price target of $10.30 in December 22nd. BGC analysts have upgraded the Canadian firm from Hold to Buy stock with a price target of $12.50 in a research note to investors on December 17th. Overall, there are 23 analysts that rate BlackBerry a ‘Hold’, 12 rate it ‘Underperform’, and 1 rates it a ‘Buy’. BlackBerry has a consensus price target of $9.75.
For the recent quarter, BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY)(TSE:BB) reported adjusted earnings of 1 cent per share on revenue of $793 million compared to the consensus estimate of a loss of 5 cents per share on $936 million in revenue. This compares to the revenue of $1.19 billion in the same quarter last year. Revenue from hardware totaled 46% while services contributed 46% and 8% came from software and other revenues.
