Jefferies & Co.’s Peter Misek this afternoon reiterated a Hold rating on Research in Motion (RIMM) shares, while taking his price target up to $17 from a prior $13.50, following an article this morning by Jonathan Geller over at TheBoyGenius suggesting RIM has been having talks with Samsung for some kind of probably is accurate in some regard.
Misek thinks RIM has indeed been “talking? to Samsung,” but he stops short of endorsing Geller’s angle that RIM is exploring the prospect of “an outright sale of or more divisions, or even the whole company.”
Rather, Misek thinks the more likely outcome is the scenario Geller’s colleague, Zach Epstein, laid out on January 5th, namely, to license its BlackBerry software.
Licensing has a “90% probability” of happening, writes Misek, without citing sources. He lays out his “best guess” as to the scenario:
We see a licensing deal announced within the next 3 months with actual BB 10 handsets out in CQ4. We see this gaining momentum on the appointment of a new Chairperson of the Board. We see Barbara Stymiest as the most likely person to become Chairperson of the Board. If she is appointed we would expect a strategic review and ultimately a major hardware restructuring. We see RIM licensing BB 10 and charging $10 per device. We believe this is the main way RIMM will be able to maintain its services revenues and build ecosystem momentum. We believe Samsung and HTC would do this to gain access to the RIM sub base. diversify away from sole dependence on Android, and create more enterprise exposure. BB 10 is effectively an Android derivative and therefore many bridges are possible.
It is the heightened possibility of a licensing deal that prompted Misek to raise his price target.
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