Guest Dazel Posted November 3, 2013 Share Posted November 3, 2013 I have no doubt that Prem will do the deal...if it comes to that.( I arbed Friday at $7.75...Prem will do well in the transaction if he gets it...the recent bbm numbers changed my mind.) He will likely be outbid by 50 cents tonight late...he will not counter higher. Dazel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fareastwarriors Posted November 3, 2013 Share Posted November 3, 2013 http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/qualcomm-and-cerberus-joining-in-founders-bid-for-blackberry/ Qualcomm and Cerberus Join a Bid for BlackBerry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
given2invest Posted November 3, 2013 Share Posted November 3, 2013 http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2013-11/02/content_17075702.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bmichaud Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 Wow - BBRY tanking premkt. A $9 bid must be in the offing.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vizi1 Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 No Bid is in the offing and Heins is gone.... http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/blackberry-fairfax-deal-dies-thorsten-heins-out/article15240310/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
finetrader Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 Apparently Fairfax is buying 250M$ of convertible bond... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alekbaylee Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20131104-905152.html?dsk=y Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gary17 Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 Best outcome - hopefully it drops a lot more and I can start buying :) ;D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
finetrader Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 Also an elegant way for PW to get out and not have to admit he did not find debt financing for his LBO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alekbaylee Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 Best outcome - hopefully it drops a lot more and I can start buying :) ;D Yup, and makes sense. Too many things to sort out in a short timeframe. Now they will have ample time to assess if a potential takeover by a Chinese firm has chances to succeed regulatory-wise. Most of BBRY will probably be dismantled and sold in pieces and FFH and Co will retain just what they see as "strategic" to develop further. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
txlaw Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 Wow, what a debacle. They can't even get the sale/break-up process correct. Yet another mistake to add to my list on this one -- thinking that FFH would have been able to line up financing before making such a bid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wachtwoord Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 If the price keeps going down like this, it's going to trade below cash (less than $2 per share to go) :o Who cancelled the deal? Does BBRY need to pay FFH a breakup fee? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gary17 Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 So for retail investors we have to wait until next earnings to get more insight Whereas FFH signed confidentiality agreement knows the state of the company... That gives them an advantage if they want to buy more now ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
txlaw Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 Nm. Just saw the convertible pricing in the press release. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
txlaw Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 Best outcome - hopefully it drops a lot more and I can start buying :) ;D Yup, and makes sense. Too many things to sort out in a short timeframe. Now they will have ample time to assess if a potential takeover by a Chinese firm has chances to succeed regulatory-wise. Most of BBRY will probably be dismantled and sold in pieces and FFH and Co will retain just what they see as "strategic" to develop further. Doubtful that FFH will be the one involved in any sort of break up at this point. Based on reports that the Lazaridis, Cerberus, and Qualcom bid is separate from the FFH bid, and that Heins is now out, there appears to be a lot of backlash among non-FFH shareholders against the highly conditional bid that FFH put out there. I've not heard anything about the pricing of the convertible. Will it be at $9, or based off of $9 per share? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rpadebet Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 Yes,I too think wellmont was right about the management incompetence on this one. Isnt this the second time they tried to sell and coudnt? The more concerning thing for me though is the convertible offering. Why did they have to issue new capital? Did they run through their cash so quickly (unlikely) or is this a way for the big guys to get their money out before the other minority shareholders? Or do they have plans for bigger capital expenditures? At current price, not too much to go before they hit their cash/share unless they have burnt through that. Today's debacle was predictable to some extent though given the late facebook rumors. If there was a possibility of a strong bid, management wouldnt have to goto facebook that late in the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
txlaw Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 Best outcome - hopefully it drops a lot more and I can start buying :) ;D Yup, and makes sense. Too many things to sort out in a short timeframe. Now they will have ample time to assess if a potential takeover by a Chinese firm has chances to succeed regulatory-wise. Most of BBRY will probably be dismantled and sold in pieces and FFH and Co will retain just what they see as "strategic" to develop further. Doubtful that FFH will be the one involved in any sort of break up at this point. Based on reports that the Lazaridis, Cerberus, and Qualcom bid is separate from the FFH bid, and that Heins is now out, there appears to be a lot of backlash among non-FFH shareholders against the highly conditional bid that FFH put out there. I've not heard anything about the pricing of the convertible. Will it be at $9, or based off of $9 per share? Posts above were reversed. 6%, with conversion price of $10. So now they had better really start lobbying to change the foreign takeover rules. I still can't believe they hadn't already started going through this process until late this summer. How inept can management/the board be? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grenville Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 51,854,700 shares at $17 = 881.5mln + 250mln = 1,131.5mln Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ballinvarosig Investors Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 Fairfax providing further financing suggests they are doubling down yet again. Very, very dangerous strategy when this investment is rapidly heading for zero. The only positive is that they now have so much skin in the game that failure simply isn't an option for Prem. With that in mind, if the Board act now, shareholders may just be able to escape with their shirts. Firstly, I hope that with Heins being given the boot, this will cause a shift in strategy from Blackberry. The present course of action has badly failed and drastic action is needed to save the company. The first thing that needs to be canned is Blackberry 10. When you look at Windows Phone making gains, you see that even the battle for 3rd place in the mobile market is lost at this stage. If I was Blackberry, I would open source the entire BB10 project and put it under the stewardship of a foundation like Apache. That way, at least the few people who did buy BB10 devices will have some sort of community support going forward. The next step I would take would be to have a fire sale of all the BB10 stock which is rapidly depreciating anyway. At least that way, Blackberry can claw back some of the money they've charged off. With the remaining resources, Blackberry can look at porting BES and BBM to Ios and Android. If they wanted to go even further, they could look at releasing a Q10/Z10 variant that runs Android but with BES/BBM tightly coupled to the OS. We know Blackberry still have some strength in enterprises, so perhaps if they can provide an update path from BB7 to a modern OS, they may just be able to survive. By using Android, they would could regain customers who liked their services, but hated their OS, they also have the possibility of attracting new customers thanks to the larger footprint of Android users. I believe that the above was Jim Balsillie's strategy. I think he understood that no matter what Blackberry did, they were always going to get steamrollered by Google and Apple - so rather than try to compete directly with them, Blackberry should have looked to leverage their products and services on a competitors platform. Better to have a smaller share of the pie, than no pie at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wellmont Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 So for retail investors we have to wait until next earnings to get more insight Whereas FFH signed confidentiality agreement knows the state of the company... That gives them an advantage if they want to buy more now ... with all due respect, FFH does not have an advantage. if anything, they have been disadvantaged here from day one. because they did not understand what was going on in mobile. Even up to the last few months. The only thing they "knew" or know now, is they wanted Out. they wanted no part of putting new equity money into this company. They were forced to add money to this company because they couldn't raise money for the deal, they couldn't get any partners, and nobody else wanted the assets at anything close to $9 a share. And this was the only option for them to try to protect the considerable amount of money they already invested. FFH now is trying to save the money they have already put in the company by investing more money in senior securities, not equity. They have an equity kicker, but rest assured, they are investing in the part of the capital structure that will have a claim on assets should this company ever declare bk. And that outcome is not out of the question. It's a disaster. It's going from bad to worse. I expect bbry will now have to make some extremely difficult decisions that they have been Avoiding making because they were too awful to even contemplate. Obviously, FFH now believes the company is going to burn lots and lots of cash before they start making any money for shareholders. bbry is going to exit the bb10 device business once and for all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wknecht Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 What an infuriating situation this is as a Fairfax shareholder. They could only raise $1b of the $4.7b? And moreover $250mm of this is coming from Fairfax despite Prem saying he would not contribute additional capital!? At 6 lousy percent! Write BBRY to zero, write the debenture to zero, and Fairfax BVPS is $313 with a highly damaged reputation (irreparable?). So much damage inflicted by one investment. Good luck Mr Chen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
txlaw Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 The more concerning thing for me though is the convertible offering. Why did they have to issue new capital? Did they run through their cash so quickly (unlikely) or is this a way for the big guys to get their money out before the other minority shareholders? Or do they have plans for bigger capital expenditures? It's hard to say now. The press release indicates that they are now going back to the old plans to transform the business model, but the convertible is clearly meant to demonstrate to existing customers and potential customers (how many of those are there now?) that they aren't going to go under by burning all their cash and stop supporting BB10 and BES. My view is that this probably should be viewed more as a bridge loan to break up. The Fairfax bid (and BBRY management's acceptance of the bid) basically signaled to all the competent employees that the company is not the place to be -- one ought to flee to GOOG or to a start up if he's currently at BBRY. That means that BBRY has no choice but to sell themselves or break themselves up in the short to medium term. The main question is who will buy the constituent parts, and what will they pay for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkbabang Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 51,854,700 shares at $17 = 881.5mln + 250mln = 1,131.5mln Ouch! Lesson? It's very expensive to try to save a dying tech company simply because it is local and hires a lot of graduates from a local university. If you don't care about making money and just want to do good, give to charity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wachtwoord Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 I expect bbry will now have to make some extremely difficult decisions that they have been Avoiding making because they were too awful to even contemplate. Obviously, FFH now believes the company is going to burn lots and lots of cash before they start making any money for shareholders. bbry is going to exit the bb10 device business once and for all. Why don't they: 1. Stop operating 2. Return all cash on hand to shareholders 3. Auction BBM and return cash to shareholders 4. Auction patents and return cash to shareholders 5. Auction subscriber contracts and network and return cash to shareholders 6. Auction QNX and return cash to shareholders Shouldn't the above easily exceed $9? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ourkid8 Posted November 4, 2013 Share Posted November 4, 2013 On top of the lousy 6%, I cannot believe the convertible is at $10! Why not at Friday's closign price?!? Tks, S What an infuriating situation this is as a Fairfax shareholder. They could only raise $1b of the $4.7b? And moreover $250mm of this is coming from Fairfax despite Prem saying he would not contribute additional capital!? At 6 lousy percent! Write BBRY to zero, write the debenture to zero, and Fairfax BVPS is $313 with a highly damaged reputation (irreparable?). So much damage inflicted by one investment. Good luck Mr Chen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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