It is being valued like a broken company
BlackBerry Ltd., once valued at US$83 billion, may be stuck with the cheapest valuation ever for a North American technology or telecommunications takeover.
While the company has six weeks to seek other bids, Pacific Crest Securities said investors should be happy to get the US$9 a share that Fairfax is offering. Chief Executive Officer Thorsten Heins, who took over in January 2012, didn’t publicly disclose the company was for sale until last month after almost a year of canvassing potential buyers. Now, BlackBerry has posted a string of quarterly sales declines and lost almost US$79 billion in market value as it fell behind Apple Inc. and Google Inc. Last week, BlackBerry said it will cut a third of its workforce and take a writedown of as much as US$960 million.The smartphone maker said Monday it reached a tentative agreement for a US$4.7 billion buyout by a group led by Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., its biggest shareholder. Including net cash, the proposal values the Waterloo, Ontario-based company at an 80% discount to its book value and just 0.17 times its sales, the cheapest revenue multiple on record among similar-sized North American telecommunications or technology acquisitions, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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