There are definitely positives in RIMM. Low valuation. Still positive earnings. No debt. RIMM email platform. Some brand cachet (even discounting the tired look for executives). There are negatives too. They are losing market share. They are struggling to convert to a new still pretty much proprietary platform. Clownbuck is right that their cash flows are bad in last 3 quarters. 3B of the book value are intangibles.
IMHO, RIMM has more time to right the ship than most bears expect. However, I am not sure they have a good plan for righting the ship yet. They have to throw in the towel and switch either to Android or to MS Win. But either of these choices makes it an also-ran late-to-the-party. On the other hand if they stick with their proprietary stack (and QNX), they will have very few developers and very few 3rd party apps. So they could sell basic smartphones, but not the top-line app-rich phones. Overall it's tough to estimate what the remaining market for them will be and how things will work out.
I think NOK is in better shape and further down the road in re-turning than RIMM. OTOH, NOK is a bigger ship, it has some of its own issues, it has losses, etc. And NOK is still risky - if their MS Win phone line is not successful, they will be in much worse shape, since they would be very late to any party.
Personally, I still prefer NOK and own a small position. However, overall, I'd say neither company is a top-line investment here. |
