Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) has been the subject of many different rumors of late, but generally speaking, the bulls have come out on top, as shares of the tech company are up 21.6% year-to-date. We’ve covered quite a bit of BBRY action this past week, from the company’s earnings report yesterday, to its CEO’s comments late last afternoon.
While chief exec Thorsten Heins did say that he expects subscriber declination to continue by the “single digits probably in the next quarter,” he’s optimistic on the potential for “new services based on BlackBerry 10” and beyond. To investors who don’t follow the rumor mill that closely, this next photo may come as a surprise, but here goes, courtesy of @bb10leaks:
Your immediate thought may be: is that what I think it is?
Well, according to the folks over at N4BB, it points to a possible road map for Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY), aka BlackBerry, through the second quarter of 2014. At first glance, the inclusion of the Z10 looks to be correctly placed, along with the Q10, which will be the first BlackBerry 10 device to feature a physical keyboard.
Now, this potentially leaked road map lines up–at least partially–with talk that BBRY will release six devices by the end of 2013. Director of Product Management in BlackBerry’s Dubai office, Mike Al Mefleh, said earlier this month that the company has “a very clear road map,” adding that it “will launch six additional new devices in 2013.”
Is it possible that the B10 L*, U10, and R10 are among the six, but then again, it’s possible that this is all hogwash.
To Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) bulls, this photo likely serves as confirmation that their favorite comeback story in the tech world has a healthy dose of product releases still on tap in the near-term.
In the bears’ corner though, the emergence of an all-inclusive BB10 lineup to include every device under the sun doesn’t change worries that the company is facing increased competition from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK), and the rest of the crew in the smartphone space, not to mention that Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is rumored to have a phone of their own coming out soon.
With all of this in mind, it’s worth considering what one very wise commentator said on CNBC‘s “Fast Money” yesterday.
Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) analyst Ehud Gelblum, who initiated an Overweight on Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY), had this to say:
GELBLUM: “The way you’ve got to play this game is more on the gross margin side, and that’s how basically handset companies have always worked. When gross margins are going up in handset companies, stocks work, when they’re going down, the stocks aren’t working. Gross margins going up now, they hit 40% this quarter, last quarter it was 31.5%, so it’s going in the right direction.”
More importantly, Gelblum said that worries that a declining subscriber base means trouble for Research In Motion Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY)’s business model are unfounded.
