[Blackberry Q&A] Fiscal revenue missed expectation, will $BB march in next fiscal year?

Key Takeaways:
● Blackberry's CEO said there are three headlines for the quarter, which are licensing, software and services and Blackberry IVY.
● For this upcoming fiscal year, John Chen, Blackberry's CEO noted their primary focus is on software and services growth.
● Blackberry's management pointed out that they have design wins with 23 of the world top 25 electric vehicle OEMs who together represent 68% of the global EV production.

BlackBerry reported total company revenue of $215 million, software and services revenue was $165 million, licensing and others was $50 million, gross margin was 73%. Here are details of Blackberry's Fourth quarter results.

This article is a script from the Q&A session of Blackberry's earnings call on March 30. In order to facilitate reading, we have made appropriate cuts. If you want to know more details, you can click the link provided below to re-watch the earnings call.

Q: Can you help us think about the two areas, which one do you think will grow stronger?
A: First of all, let me clarify one thing. Billings, we expect double-digit growth in both Spark and BTS. From a revenue standpoint because it's subscription-based revenue, we expect single digit percentage growth in Spark and we expect double-digit percentage growth in BTS. So you are right in expecting BTS to have a strong growth because of the recovery.

Q: What's different now that's making you consider selling your portfolio?
A: There are two reasons. Number one is, I really think it is a wrong thing to sell the entire portfolio because there is so much of our -- we have an ongoing business in cybersecurity and an ongoing business in BTS which of course includes IVY and QNX. I think selling those portfolio will be extremely unwise for the company and for the shareholders.

Q: Have you contemplated issuing equity at these levels seeing how it could enhance the strategy having more equity or more cash?
A: The only thing that we won't do is we won't intentionally dilute our shareholders just to keep some money in the bank or on the balance sheet. I'd like to make sure that we have at least some idea of the usage. So when people come to me and say, by the way you could raise a converted zero percent and a premium of X percent up -- 40%, 50% up, let's say, yeah, I see that very attractive. But then I keep asking my people so, OK. Once you get the money, what do you do with it, because you have a dilution hanging over your head and so I don't know what to answer your question. I guess kind of just kind of explain how I think about it. I'm not against it. I know there is very attractive terms out there and at this level of equity, so but I want to do, make sure that we have a targeted use that could help the business first.

Q: How profitable are these licensing revenues. Is the gross margin, for example, higher than your corporate average?
A: Yes. Which is painful for us in the first couple of quarters, because we expect one way or the other, it is going to be a low revenue -- low level, but the answer is yes, it's higher than the corporate number by significant percentage.