This is a summary of the fourth quarter fiscal 2009 earnings call as presented by Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM) on April 2, 2009.
Management
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Vice President, Investor Relations: Edel Ebbs
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Co-Chief Executive Officer, Director: James L. Balsillie
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Chief Accounting Officer: Brian Bidulka
Key Investors Issues:
- Net income was $1.89 billion, or $3.30 per share diluted, up 46.3% over fiscal 2008.
- Revenue was approximately $11 billion, an increase of 84% over the $6 billion in the previous year.
Full Year Highlights
- The firm shipped out the 50 millionth BlackBerry smartphone.
- The number of devices shipped almost doubled to 26 million and there are now over 25 million BlackBerry subscriber accounts.
Fourth Quarter Highlghts
Revenue was $3.46 billion, up 24% from $2.78 billion in the previous quarter.
- This was due to higher shipments in the latter part of the period.
- Net income was $518.3 million, or 90 cents per share diluted, compared with $412.5 million, or 72 cents per share diluted, in the same quarter last year.
Hand-held devices represented $2.88 billion, or 83% of Research In Motion''s revenue, up from $2.25 billion, or 81% of the previous quarter.
- Total devices shipped of approximately 7.8 million were up from 6.7 million in the prior quarter.
- Approximately 7.3 million new devices were activated, either for new customers or for replacements and upgrades, not including phone-only sales.
Revenue subscriber account additions and shipments all up in the period more than 80% from last year.
- Demand for BlackBerry products and services reached net subscriber account additions far exceeding forecastS.
- Approximately 3.9 million BlackBerry Net subscriber accounts were added in the quarter, up over 50% from the third quarter.
The strength of the BlackBerry Net subscriber account additions in December was unprecedented.
- Many carriers hit their highest level of Net activations ever.
- The channel and marketing support for BlackBerry products was at an all-time high.
- Greater momentum following the holiday buying season, a continued positive reception of new products and a breadth of carrier promotions drove this outperformance.
Both North America and international outpaced forecasts and about one-third of BlackBerry subscriber account base continues to be outside of North America.
- The non-enterprise market drove exceptional results given the typical holiday seasonality and the nature of carrier promotions in the quarter.
- Approximately 70% of net new subscriber accounts came from non-enterprise.
- These customers now represent approximately half of the total BlackBerry subscriber account base.
In Canada both Bell and Telus successfully launched Storm with numerous promotions and advertising campaigns.
- Storm is now launching in a number of emerging markets, including TIM Brazil, Vodafone India, and multiple carriers in Hong Kong.
- The BlackBerry Storm was awarded the GSM Association''s Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough Award at the Mobile World Congress in February.
- The Curve 8900 was launched at a number of carriers.
