“Research In Motion Ltd. shares fell as much as 14 percent as analysts said a reduced profit forecast hurts management’s credibility and raises pressure on the company as it heads into an annual trade show next week,” Hugo Miller and Greg Bensinger report for Bloomberg.
“‘This further damages already low credibility, making them the ‘poster boy’ for a show-me story from here,’ Mike Abramsky, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets in Toronto, said in a research note,” Miller and Bensinger report. “He slashed his price estimate for RIM stock to $55 from $90 and his rating to ‘sector perform’ from ‘top pick.'”
Miller and Bensinger report, “‘Management needs to deliver on the product side,’ said Paul Taylor, chief investment officer at BMO Harris Private Banking in Toronto, who manages about $14.5 billion including RIM and Apple shares. ‘That includes competitive next-generation smartphones and building out the app library.’ Apple offers more than 350,000 software applications, or apps, and Google’s Android Market has more than 150,000, compared with more than 25,000 in BlackBerry App World.”
“RIM fell $7.24, or 13 percent, to $49.36, at 9:37 a.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading, after dropping as low as $48.46 for the biggest intraday drop since September 2009,” Miller and Bensinger report. “At least four other analysts — Jefferies & Co. Inc.’s Peter Misek, Cormark Securities Inc.’s Richard Tse, Gleacher & Co. Securities’ Stephen Patel and National Bank Financial’s Kris Thompson — reduced their ratings on the stock… ‘The sales on their existing devices must have fallen off a cliff,’ said Matt Thornton, an Avian Securities LLC analyst in Boston who has a ‘neutral’ rating on the stock. ‘They are getting hit by a combination of a stale portfolio and heated competition on devices.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: iPhone, killer.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]