BlackBerry Reports 34% Fall In Revenue With Surprising Operating Profit

BlackBerry Ltd has posted a surprising third-quarter operating profit but a disappointing revenue performance. The company reported a profit excluding one-time items of $6 million, or 1 cent a share. The revenue plunged to  $793 million, down about 34% from a year earlier. 

BlackBerry is trying hard to gain its percentage in the market. It had a failed attempt last year in competing with Apple Inc., Samsung Electronic Inc. and other device makers. As of now BlackBerry is trying to make a comeback by selling devices, mobility security software and services to customers in the health-care, government and professional and financial sectors. 

BlackBerry CEO, John Chen said BlackBerry's ability to generate positive cash flow in the latest quarter signals that turnaround plan is on track, WSJ quoted. 

However he acknowledged that more work is to be done in generating new sales. 

"We achieved a key milestone in our eight quarter plan with positive cash flow," Mr. Chen said in a release. "Our focus now turns to expanding our distribution and driving revenue growth."

BlackBerry said it recognized hardware revenue on about 2 million devices in the latest period. However, the company needs to sell 10 million phones a year to make a profit from the device business. In the first nine months the company has recognized revenue on a total of 5.7 million phones, indicating it needs to generate revenue on 4.3 million phones in its fourth quarter for this business to break even, WSJ noted.

BlackBerry's cash position remained same from the previous quarter at $3.1 billion.