The Successful Investor Hotline – Friday, March 30, 2012

Article Excerpt

PLEASE NOTE: Our next Hotline will go out on Thursday, April 5, 2012. RESEARCH IN MOTION LTD., $14.63, Toronto symbol RIM, earned $418 million, or $0.80 a share, in its fiscal 2012 fourth quarter, which ended March 3, 2012 (all amounts except share price in U.S. dollars). These figures exclude a $346-million (after-tax) writedown of goodwill and a $197-million writedown of inventory of unsold BlackBerry smartphones. On this basis, RIM’s latest earnings fell short of the consensus estimate of $0.81 a share. The latest earnings are also down 55.2% from $934 million, or $1.78 a share, a year earlier. Revenue in the quarter fell 24.6%, to $4.2 billion from $5.6 billion. Hardware sales accounted for 68% of RIM’s revenue, followed by services (27%) and software (5%). RIM shipped 11.1 million BlackBerry smartphones in the quarter, down 21.3% from the third quarter. Strong competition prompted the company to cut the price of its PlayBook tablet computer. As a result, PlayBook shipments jumped to over 500,000…