How good is "good enough"? I guess that depends on your expectations. Today, it looks like Mr. Market set up Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) to fail miserably.
The smartphone maven reported second-quarter results that would look awesome for most companies and great even for hypergrowth businesses like Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) or Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG). Revenue ballooned 37% year over year to $3.53 billion on 8.3 million BlackBerry handsets shipped. GAAP earnings landed at $0.83 per diluted share, not terribly far from last year's $0.86 per diluted share. And RIM's stock is down 17%.
Now, RIM is a pretty darn volatile stock for its size. Its beta stands at 2.0, meaning that the stock price swings twice as hard, on average, as the general market. Only a handful of stocks with a market cap over $30 billion can match that kind of boogie groove -- and most of those are megabanks like Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) or Citigroup (NYSE:C), a sector whose extreme highs and (mostly) lows explain their extreme volatility.
With RIM, the high beta and massive summer gains seem more like speculation and big dreams. Some of the air was taken out of that microbubble by management's fall-season forecasts. Sales and unit volumes will keep growing, but maybe not as fast as analysts would like. Net income should stay just about where it is now, or grow just a bit. To Wall Street analysts and investors with high-flying dreams, that doesn't sound like a growth stock gearing up for a fantastic holiday shopping season.
Perhaps the plethora of BlackBerry competitors is starting to sink in, too. Management's outlook may also be an implication of anonymous threats from Apple's iPhones, Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android army, and Nokia's (NYSE:NOK) attempts to come up with a winning smartphone.
Will RIM resume its skyward climb, or does this stock have a long way left to fall? The financials are more than solid, but a two-star CAPS rating points to the latter. Which way will it go, Fools? Please leave your comments in the box below.
