BlackBerry Shares Down After Another Top Exec Leaves

Monday, October 16, 2017
(Reuters) – BlackBerry Ltd’s (BB.N) (BB.TO) U.S.-listed shares fell more than 1 percent on Monday, their first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, after a second senior executive at its patent licensing unit quit this month.

Victor Schubert, who was a licensing director for BlackBerry, said on Friday he was no longer with the company, following on the heels of the departure of Mark Kokes, who led BlackBerry’s overall patent strategy.

“Investors are left asking, if corporate insiders are leaving, why should we stick around?”, said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of 50 Park Investments in New York.

“With BlackBerry there’s also a larger macro question and its investors are asking ‘what’s their professional edge?’”, said Sarhan, who does not own shares in the company.

Monetizing the company’s intellectual property is a key part of BlackBerry Chief Executive John Chen’s plan for turning around the company, which took a back seat to Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and other firms in the smartphone industry.

BlackBerry is trying to get companies to pay licensing fees for the use of its 40,000 global patents on technology – spanning operating systems, networking infrastructure, automotive subsystems, cybersecurity and wireless communications.

The company is hoping the move will curb a six-year revenue decline as customers ditched its once-popular smartphones for Android and Apple devices.

BlackBerry debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, transferring its shares from Nasdaq.
Shares of the company were down 1.03 percent at $11.45, while the broader S&P 500 Index .SPX and the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI were up.
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https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/10/16/business/16reuters-stocks-blackberry.html