Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) may be losing market share, but it's still way too early to write the company off entirely.
Last night's second-quarter report proved as much, with revenue rising 31% year-over-year to $4.6 billion, while 76% higher earnings amounted to $1.46 per share. These figures surprised Wall Street, and RIM's stock is trading higher today as a result. That's despite the fact that RIM's 4.5 million net new subscriber accounts fell far below management guidance, as a large number of the quarter's BlackBerry sales simply upgraded the phone attached to an existing account rather than going into a whole new belt clip.
So that's the good news. On the downside, RIM's results don't look all that impressive when held up to the light of Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) burning through $5.3 billion in iPhone sales alone last quarter, at a 76% annual growth clip. The Android platform, in turn, is crushing both Apple and RIM, though without funneling all the sales into a single company with reportable revenue, which makes dollar-growth comparisons a bit awkward.
RIM's management is talking itself warm over the BlackBerry Torch launch, despite reports of relatively weak launch sales of a phone that doesn't impress anyone in the age of Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Droid X, iPhone 4, and Samsung Galaxy S superphones. But hey, the proof is in the pudding: RIM couldn't have beaten estimates without some pretty strong Torch sales, especially given the high upgrade quotient we just talked about. I guess the cult of CrackBerry addiction is still going strong.
If RIM can keep it that way without adding a whole lot of new addicts, maybe that's good enough to support the share price. The former high-flying market darling has become a downright value stock:
|
Company |
P/E (trailing earnings) |
Peak P/E, 2008 to Today |
|---|---|---|
|
RIM |
8.7 |
67.8 |
|
Apple |
20.8 |
49.6 |
|
Motorola |
50.9 |
121.1 |
|
Nokia (NYSE: NOK) |
29.7 |
66.9 |
Source: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's.
In fact, the current growth would need to hit an absolute brick wall for the P/E ratio to make any sense. Even if you think RIM is toast in the long term, you have to see a ridiculous value in the stock at the moment.
I've never been a Research In Motion fan, nor a BlackBerry addict, but I'm moved to rate the stock "outperform" in our CAPS system, at least for the next year or so. There should be a nice rebound in there somewhere, but all bets are off after that. Tag along if you like.
