Very little has gone as planned for BlackBerry this year. The company’s Plan A was to vault itself back into competition with iOS and Android by releasing BlackBerry 10. When that plan failed, the company looked to attract bidders to take itself private through a consortium led by Fairfax Financial. Now that the Fairfax plan has similarly fallen through, the question remains on what the company will do next to keep itself afloat. RBC Capital analyst Mark Sue writes in a research note on Tuesday that new BlackBerry interim CEO John Chen desperately needs to come up with a Plan C and should at least consider dumping the company’s hardware business to focus only on enterprise security software.
“We believe Mr. Chen must move quickly on stabilizing BlackBerry,” writes Sue. “Specifically, we think liabilities with BlackBerry’s consumer business need to be contained, restructuring must be implemented and possibly deepened, and plans made to fully embark on its enterprise strategy… While BlackBerry appears committed to its handset business and BB10, hardware may be a distraction, particularly with limited scale.”
Sue thinks things are going to get worse before they get better even if Chen concocts the perfect turnaround strategy, however, and has assigned BlackBerry shares a measly $5 price target.
