Mobile stock to watch: BlackBerry Ltd(NASDAQ: BBRY)

By Swapna Meka September 28, 2017, 6:01 pm • Posted in Stocks, Technology

BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ: BBRY) stock delivered a strong rally of over 16.3% today (As of 12:43PM EDT on September 28^th, 2017; Source: Google finance) driven by their solid second quarter of 2018 performance. The group delivered a historical high in total software and services revenue and gross margin, as well as the highest non-GAAP operating margin in over five years, showing their transformation. They delivered a revenue of $249 million (non-GAAP) and $238 million (GAAP) during the quarter while software and services revenue reached $196 million (non-GAAP) and $185 million (GAAP). Their gross margin rreached 76% (non-GAAP) and 74% (GAAP) while operating margin reached 12% (non-GAAP) and 9% (GAAP).

The group’s enterprise billings enhanced 19% on a year over year basis boosted by their Unified Endpoint Management platform. The group won major design wins in their automotive business, while expanded their sales channels for their Radar IOT solution. In their licensing businesses, the group is having a strong business with their BlackBerry Secure software and our IP portfolio.

BlackBerry is also strengthening their security and for the second consecutive year, the group got the highest scores in all six use cases as per the Gartner Critical Capabilities for High-Security Mobility Management report. The won four new FedRAMP customers and now have over 300,000 licensed users on their FedRAMP authorized cloud service as of the end of second quarter of 2017, which is a rise of 162% as compared to the first quarter of 2017.

For the fiscal year of 2018, the group is on track to achieve software and services revenue growth in the range of 10 percent to 15 percent and profitability for the full year.

The group got NIAP certification for SecuSUITE for Government, which brings an end-to-end solution for encrypted voice calls and text messages to the U.S. and Canadian governments while SecuSUITE is the only NIAP-certified voice solution supporting iOS, Android and BlackBerry (BBRY) 10 smartphones and tablets.