Earnings Labs

BlackBerry Limited (BB)

Q4 2006 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 6, 2006

$5.13

-3.57%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-5.47%

1 Week

-9.49%

1 Month

-9.42%

vs S&P

-10.76%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the RIM fourth quarter fiscal 2006 year end results conference call. (Operator Instructions) I will now turn the conference over to Dennis Kavelman, CFO. Mr. Kavelman, please go ahead. Dennis Kavelman: Thank you. Welcome to RIM's fiscal 2006 fourth quarter and year end results conference call. With me is Jim Balsillie, RIM Chairman and Co-CEO. After reading the required forward-looking statements disclaimer, I will begin by providing an overview of fourth quarter results as well as our guidance for Q1. I will then turn the call over to Jim who will provide a business and strategic update. We will then open up the call for questions. I would like to note that this call is available to the general public by call-in number and webcast. A replay of the webcast will be available on the RIM.com website. We plan to wrap up the call at 6 p.m. Eastern this evening. Some of the statements Jim and I will be making today constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian Securities laws. These include statements about our expectations and estimates with respect to revenue, gross margin, operating expenses, stock option expense, investment income, earnings, EPS, and ASPs for Q1 and beyond; our expectations regarding RIM's near and long-term tax rates; our estimates in the number of BlackBerry subscriber accounts, subscriber account additions, and other nonfinancial estimates; our product development initiatives and timing; developments relating to our carrier partners; new and expanding markets for our products and other statements regarding our plans and objectives. I will indicate forward-looking statements by using words such as expect, anticipate, estimate, may, will, plan, should, forecast, intend, believe, and similar expressions. All forward-looking statements reflect our current views with respect to future…

Jim Balsillie

Management

Thank you, Dennis. Before I provide a business update I would like to thank our shareholders for their support over the past several months as we worked our way through the resolution of the patent litigation. With this behind us, we are invigorated and excited to be able to focus 100% on growing our business and leveraging the many opportunities ahead of us. As Dennis discussed earlier, we're beginning to see some momentum return to our BlackBerry business with subscriber account additions and business opportunities increasing noticeably since early March. In the past few weeks, we have surpassed the 5 million subscriber mark and are poised to extend our market leadership as we move into the new fiscal year. While there is no doubt that our business lost some momentum during the past few months, everyone at RIM is encouraged and excited about the strength we are now beginning to see. The majority of RIM's carrier partners are showing significant growth and have many new BlackBerry programs planned for this year. We are also seeing our investment in international markets begin to pay off and expect these to contribute increasingly to our growth over the coming year. We believe the market for wireless solutions is still in its early stages and there is no doubt that it is growing at a rapid pace. BlackBerry is in a very good position to take advantage of this. Mike and I are extremely focused and confident that RIM has the product platform and the business plan to capitalize on this opportunity. We have an exciting slate of new products scheduled for the remainder of fiscal 2007 that will expand our presence in existing markets and open the doors to new ones. In addition, we continue to seek opportunities for technology-focused acquisitions, similar to…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Andrew Lee of TD Newcrest.

Andrew Lee - TD Newcrest

Analyst

Jim, on the last update you just made a comment with regards to the lack of competitive losses for your product through the litigation, that most of the decisions were being delayed. Now that we have another month behind us, can you still give us a refresh on that? It looks like the sub numbers some would view to be not reflective of what should be some stronger pent up demand. Thank you.

Jim Balsillie

Management

Well, I think Dennis addressed that in his guidance and really we just want to be careful on this, and we don't want to overstate the case. The trending is very, very positive, and we have a number of launches. There is a certain latency in relaunching demand. As I said before, we didn't see the competitive shift. For all the hype and hyperbole and polemics that were spun out there, it just didn't materialize, and the carriers reflected this. Really we're seeing strong growth, and there are a couple of carriers that have key launches in the next 30 days that are really key to get them back up to the position where they want to be. Really, it is not like we've seen some slower growth all over the place. Most of the key places are very, very strong, and there are just a couple laggards, so the average is a bit deceptive. It's really a couple case specific points. Hopefully with the key initiatives they'll pop back. That is the plan and expectation. We just don't want to get ahead of ourselves. But at the end of the day it has not been a competition thing. A lot of competitors have tried, and it possibly created some flood for reflection, but it hasn't caused anyone to switch that's notified me or that I have become aware that said, look I am not happy any more. I haven't had one case come my way.

Andrew Lee - TD Newcrest

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Rob Sanderson of American Technology Research. Please go ahead.

Rob Sanderson - American Technology Research

Analyst

Thank you. Good afternoon. I just wanted to follow on Andrew's question. Obviously a very big delta from where your thinking was last September. I agree, we can't really see any real size of competitive loss. Probably people will be a little concerned on health of the end market. Can you comment on if you've seen any changes in end market demand or you think it is 100% related to overhang on NTP? Jim, could you comment maybe on IT budget cycles or carrier marketing budget cycles? Is that something that really takes more than 90 days to turn around? Is that part of the lower than expected guidance?

Jim Balsillie

Management

Well, it is a fair question. Again, we have seen most of the key markets pop back really nicely; and really we just have one or two laggards. What happens is -- that's really what it is quite frankly. Most of them are at or beyond planned. Just one or two of them have pushed out a product cycle by 45 days, and that really catches you when you're popping back and they're overhung compared to themselves and compared to a competitor network. I just don't see it as a budgeting thing. I think the end market's plenty healthy. There is such a pay back on this. There is a lot of execution stuff on our part. Our world is so much about a productive channel and keeping it strong. Strong with hardware, strong with applications, strong with support, strong with marketing programs and that's part of our special sauce, and it has all got to be lined up well, and we do it well. There are a couple key ones that are just shifting on that, and plus even in their own markets when they have new products coming, it is a little tougher for their own sales guys to push something hard when there is something maybe stronger coming real soon. So I think it is very carrier specific what's going on. I don't think it has anything to do with IT budgets and health of the end market whatsoever. There is such a demand productivity quotient in our game that we're pretty isolated from those macro economic stats. I have never really seen that weigh on our world. You get a little bit of competitive thud. But that creates a selling opportunity, and as I said before, a lot of what we're driving on are new countries…

Rob Sanderson - American Technology Research

Analyst

All right. Thank you, guys.

Operator

Operator

Next question comes from Paul Coster of J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Paul Coster - JP Morgan

Analyst

Good afternoon, Jim, and Dennis. Just one question actually, which is that many of us expect this market to be potentially very large, $150 million; but we're seeing the revenue growth rate declining for eight successive quarters. How do we reconcile these? It seems like you're growing towards a market of say $10 million ultimately rather than $100 million. Dennis Kavelman: That's a fair comment, and first of all, no one is making any reasonable ground from the competitive point of view, so all of that posturing and hyperbole is completely, quite frankly, misrepresented. I think that the nature of this market is when you have an emerging market, it goes by fits and spurts. It is just not a linear up to the right. There is no question we're reloading. We're executing fine here. That's all fine. We're also doing a massive reload set of activities for September, October. So on the one hand we've got all the carriers going, we have some key launches, and we mentioned T-Mobile is showing the 8700. There are a couple other key products that are coming out in May that we would have liked in early April. They're pushed to late May. It slows down a key carrier now and then, and you get caught in time windows. I think you see the things -- Google, we've launched their tremendous services in Talk and we have plans for Local with them. Our stuff with Yahoo! just got announced in 160 carriers. That was in just a handful. It is a much richer service. There is a tremendous number of things, and so I think what's really happened is the kind of low-hanging, very easy fruit was grabbed, --just hey, I am a working person or I'm a high-end person who wants some…

Paul Coster - JP Morgan

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from Jeffrey Kvaal of Lehman Brothers.

Jeffrey Kvaal - Lehman Brothers

Analyst

Dennis, my question is targeted for you I think. It seems as though there is a lot of things that you're suggesting will help the sub number as we progress through the May quarter, even more late in the May quarter. The August outlook I think is sometimes affected by seasonality, last year was flat to slightly up in terms of net adds. How should we think about the trajectory of those two conflicting themes as we head into August? Dennis Kavelman: Q2 is a tricky one. There is a reason we guide one quarter out, and quite frankly as I tried to describe by my longer section today was exactly how we think about it, and how we watch the week to week. Clearly we had a bit of a game changing event four-and-a-half weeks ago, so the trick is to try to watch and see what's happening. Last week was an exceptional week. We've talked with about what we're seeing with which carriers and how it is going. I wanted you to get inside my head a bit and see the data we use when we're planning going forward, and combined with the data from the last four-and-a-half weeks, we have the plans and quotas of the different carrier teams and the marketing groups expectations and programs for the next two months. Based on all of that, I really do see steady up and to the right growth. I think that continues very solidly through June and July. In the past, the seasonality in Q2 typically hits you most in August and there, it is most significant in Europe. Retail and BES is becoming a bigger and bigger piece of our overall sales to the extent, I think that's one offsetting factor, because you do get back to…

Jeffrey Kvaal - Lehman Brothers

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Next question is from Maynard Um of UBS Warburg. Please go ahead.

Maynard Um - UBS Warburg

Analyst

You talked a little about new products this quarter. Can you just offer some more detail, as you talked being a little bit more aggressive in the consumer space and potentially how you would address the small to medium-sized businesses? Should we expect camera BlackBerry's UMTS? If you can provide a little more detail. Thank you.

Jim Balsillie

Management

Well, Maynard, that's a fair question. I think the media aspects of the BlackBerry is something you can expect some plans on it and I won't go in any more detail than that. That really does some interesting things. I think you can also see things BlackBerries that support all of the transports that are out there, and that's both EDGE and EVDO which we're seeing a lot of success on. Certainly one can expect some UMTS type solutions in that respect, and so that's exciting new hardware media capabilities. As well as exciting new transports, and that's the second dimension, hardware and transport. The third one is that with the BIS 2.0 it has got tremendously enhanced capabilities in terms of active ease of activation, ease of provisioning, ease of manageability which is really the tough parasitic drag that you encounter when you leave the enterprise, and so that's a big, big step forward. The fourth dimension going on is a lot of application enhancement. A small example, the Yahoo! Mail announcement we made is an iMap mail interface instead of POP and it is free. Most people pay for POP access from Yahoo!. Now iMap is free. POP has latency, iMap doesn't and you get that rich integration of deletes and read and sent, kind of like you do on a BES in the Yahoo! store and you get instant messaging available -- and you get it all over the world -- so that's an application enhancement as I would say. The uptake of Google Local with the mapping and Google Talk has been fantastic. The downloads and utilization has been fantastic and certainly there's plans to put ads in that by them, and so on and so forth, as well as the search that Google does. Really…

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call for today. Thank you for participating. Please disconnect your lines.