December 20th, 2007

RIM: BlackBerry demand just swell; Earnings more than double

Posted by Larry Dignan @ 1:52 pm

Categories: General, Mobile, Personal Technology, Research In Motion, Wired & Wireless

Tags: Research In Motion Ltd., RIM BlackBerry, Earnings, Financial Accounting, Construction, Finance, Larry Dignan

Research in Motion said Thursday that it added 1.65 million BlackBerry subscriber accounts for the third quarter ended Dec. 1 and shipped more than 3.9 million devices. That demand added up to RIM doubling its earnings.

For the third quarter, RIM (all resources) reported earnings of $370 million, or 65 cents a share, on revenue of $1.67 billion, up 22 percent from a year ago. In the third quarter a year ago, RIM reported earnings of $175.2 million, or 31 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting earnings of 62 cents a share, according to Thomson Financial.

But what had Wall Street jazzed–RIM was sharply higher in afterhours trading–was the outlook. RIM projected fourth quarter earnings to be 66 cents a share to 70 cents a share compared to Wall Street estimates of 65 cents a share. RIM projected fourth quarter revenue of $1.8 billion to $1.87 billion.

RIM said it was seeing strong demand across enterprise, SMB and consumer markets. In a statement, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said “we are also pleased with the excellent consumer sales results achieved so far in the holiday buying season.”