BlackBerry, which is in trouble due to weakness in its smartphone business, is in talks with Cisco, Google and SAP to sell parts or all of the Company , said several sources familiar with the situation.
A transaction of this type could be an alternative to the preliminary agreement reached with a group led by Fairfax Financial Holdings, the largest shareholder of BlackBerry, to buy the company for about 4,700 million dollars, an offer that has generated skepticism by financial issues.
The firm, based in Ontario, has requested preliminary expressions of interest from potential strategic buyers such as Intel Corp., LG and Samsung , by the beginning of next week.
It is not clear if any of the companies will bid. Potential buyers have been particularly interested in the network of secure servers and the BlackBerry patent portfolio, but doubt whether the value of the assets will remain a problem, sources said.
Google, Intel , Cisco, LG and SAP declined to comment, while Samsung was not immediately available.Possible stakeholders are proceeding cautiously because of uncertainty about the BlackBerry, which last month had a loss Quarterly of nearly 1,000 million dollars for a much lower sales than analysts expected.
The value of the patent portfolio and licensing agreements BlackBerry could be reduced by half in the next 18 months, according to a presentation made by the company this week, potentially limiting its appeal.
Analysts, BlackBerry assets including a diminished but still well regarded business services that enhances their messaging system focused on safety, 3000-4500 valued million, a collection of patents that could be worth between 2000-3000 million and 3,100 million in cash and investments.
Another problem for the company is the fact that you could spend almost 2,000 million of its cash in the next year and a half, said on Thursday Pierre Ferragu, analyst at Bernstein, after studying the presentation.
In August, BlackBerry said it was studying its options, including an outright sale, after Reuters say that the board of the company was exploring the possibility of letting go public.
BlackBerry pioneered the concept of mobile email, secure email messages offering to send and receive out of the office. Long a mandatory device for governments, companies and lawyers.
But in recent years it has lost market share to Apple’s iPhone and devices using Google’s Android operating system. Reuters
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