BlackBerry Reports 'Strong' Q4, But 2019 Guidance Is Limited, Says BMO

BlackBerry Ltd BB's fourth-quarter earnings report was highlighted by a top-and-bottom-line beat, but a BMO Capital Markets analyst has some concerns with management's "limited" guidance.

The Analyst

BMO Capital Markets' Tim Long maintains a Market Perform rating on BlackBerry's stock with an unchanged $12 price target.

The Thesis

BlackBerry's Q4 print Wednesday was "strong," as revenues, margins and EPS all came in ahead of expectations, Long said in a research report. The upside to expectations in the quarter for the Candian company was driven by better-than-expected performance in software and services, enterprise software and licensing, although technologies results came in as expected, the analyst said. 

BlackBerry guided software billings to rise by a double-digit figure in fiscal 2019, with positive EPS and free cash flow, Long said. "However, unlike in the past couple of years, management decided against providing concrete software revenue growth expectations," the analyst said. 

BMO now models the following for BlackBerry in 2019: 

• 10-percent revenue growth. 
• Underlying 8-percent growth in enterprise, 15-percent growth in technologies and 8-percent growth in licensing. 

Price Action

Shares of BlackBerry were trading lower by 4.6 percent at the time of publication Thursday. 

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Photo courtesy of BlackBerry.