BlackBerry has been having a rough go of it the past few years, much of it due to the decline in sales of their hardware which at one point in time were the highlight of smart devices. In a technological world dominated by Android and iOS devices though, BlackBerry has had trouble staying relevant in the hearts and minds of those looking to grab a smartphone. Just in the last couple of months though BlackBerry finally released an Android-powered smartphone known as the Priv, and it’s helped the company reach a year-over-year growth that is much better than what they were expecting for the fiscal 2016 third quarter (BlackBerry reports a total sale number of 700,000 Priv units for the quarter), as their latest earnings report boasts a 43 percent rise in organic growth for their software license revenue over the previous year during the same time.
Alongside the increase for their software license revenue is a 183 percent rise in organic growth of software and services together, which has collectively helped them reach a Non-GAAP total revenue of $557 Million. BlackBerry states that this dollar amount of profits has put them up 14 percent from the second quarter in the 2016 fiscal year which is no small accomplishment, especially considering the difficulties they’ve been having in this area for quite some time. Although for BlackBerry the key important parts from their latest earnings report will be the boosted revenue growth, from the consumer side of things the most important detail is that BlackBerry now offers an Android phone, something which many people have been wanting.
Other highlights of BlackBerry’s latest earnings report are an adjusted EBITDA of $114 Million, and at the end of the fiscal quarter BlackBerry reports $2.71 Billion in cash and investments balance, which includes $15 Million in positive free cash flow, and part comes from their recent purchase of Good Technology which prior to the acquisition was a rival company to BlackBerry in the enterprise security space. BlackBerry’s Non-GAAP revenue was predicted to be at about $488 Million, so these results put them at around $69 Million above their projected target amount. Although not entirely due to the launch of the Priv, BlackBerry’s third quarter results for the 2016 fiscal year look better than they could have hoped, and it’s very possible that this positive momentum could continue as they have also seen a rise in their share pricing by about 11 percent.