What happened
For the second day in a row, shares of software company BlackBerry (BB -1.43%) are sliding. Down more than 6% in Tuesday trading, they were falling another 7.5% through 1:45 p.m. EST Wednesday, a two-day loss that adds up to nearly 13%.
And you can blame Canaccord Genuity for all of that.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
In a bit of a head fake of a ratings change, Canaccord raised its price target on BlackBerry yesterday, but then downgraded the shares to sell.
As the analyst explained, BlackBerry's business is improving a bit, with "modest sequential growth" in sales of its QNX operating system and software licensing revenue rising to meet expectations. But despite these small improvements, Canaccord doesn't see a whole lot of growth at BlackBerry. Certainly not enough to justify paying 6.6 times sales for a stock that lost money last year, and will probably lose money this year and (according to most analysts) for years to come.
Now what
According to Canaccord, about the most investors can hope for out of BlackBerry is 5.6% sales growth in fiscal 2022, followed by 7.4% sales growth in 2023. It's worth pointing out that these estimates are more pessimistic than the average forecast on Wall Street, where the consensus calls for 9.2% sales growth next year. Still, even this more-optimistic take would imply just single-digit growth rates for BlackBerry stock.
That's not much to cheer about, and in the absence of any profits, perhaps even less so.
