UPDATED 17:53 EDT / SEPTEMBER 26 2024

SECURITY

BlackBerry reports second-quarter earnings and revenue beats

BlackBerry Ltd. today logged earnings and revenue beats in its fiscal second quarter.

For the quarter that ended on Aug. 31, BlackBerry reported it broke even, up from a loss of four cents per share in the quarter of the previous year, on revenue of $145 million, up 10% year-over-year. Analysts had been expecting a loss of three cents per share on revenue of $140.82 million.

Across its product divisions, BlackBerry saw revenue from its IoT division grow 12% year-over-year, to $55 million, and its Cybersecurity unit grow 10%, to $87 million. Licensing revenue fell $1 million from a year ago, to $3 million. Cybersecurity annual recurring revenue was flat year-over-year at $279 million. The company’s dollar-based net retention rate was up 7%.

BlackBerry ended the quarter with $265 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term and long-term investments on hand.

Highlights in the quarter included the July release of CylanceMDR Pro, a managed detection and response service built on its artificial intelligence-powered Open XDR platform. The service is designed to tackle the challenges of modern cybersecurity by overcoming the operational burden facing security teams that must defend against increasingly sophisticated adversaries across expanding attack surfaces.

CylanceMDR Pro is powered by Cylance AI, BlackBerry’s predictive AI that uses intelligence to analyze telemetry for attack signals, prioritize and present structured cases for faster human-led investigation and response and to stop attacks before damage can occur.

BlackBerry QNX, the company’s real-time operating system for embedded systems, also saw the addition of QNX Containers to support OS virtualization and containerization on QNX-based devices. The feature provides highly secure and isolated embedded containers while maintaining the high performance and real-time nature of QNX OS 8.

BlackBerry’s stock rose more than 6% in regular trading before the report, but fell less than a point in after-hours trading.

“BlackBerry reached a significant milestone on our path to profitability,” Chief Executive John J. Giamatteo said in the company’s earnings release. “This result was achieved through a combination of stronger than expected, double-digit revenue growth for both IoT and Cybersecurity, as well as tremendous ongoing progress in rationalizing our cost structure.”

For its fiscal 2025 third quarter, BlackBerry expects adjusted earnings per share of break even at the midpoint on revenue of $146 million to $154 million. For the full fiscal year, the company expects an adjusted loss of two to five cents per share on revenue of $591 million to $616 million.

Photo: BlackBerry

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