BlackBerry's Stock Sinks As Surprise Profit Offset By Sales Miss

Shares of BlackBerry Ltd. tumbled 6.9% in premarket trade Friday, after the software and services company reported a surprise fiscal first-quarter profit but sales that fell below expectations. The company swung to a net profit of $671 million, or $1.23 a share, in the quarter to May 31, from a loss of $670 million, of $1.28 a share, in the same period a year ago. Excluding non-recurring items, adjusted earnings per share came to 2 cents, beating the FactSet consensus of a breakeven quarter. Revenue fell to $235 million from $400 million, while adjusted revenue of $244 was below the FactSet consensus of $261.8 million. Enterprise software and services revenue declined to $101 million from $106 million. The company said its fiscal 2018 outlook is unchanged, with growth expected to be at or above the overall software and services market. "Our ecosystem is growing with Qualcomm and NVIDIA adopting BlackBerry technology for their automotive platforms," said Chief Executive John Chen. The stock has soared 60.5% year to date through Thursday, while the SPDR Technology Select Sector ETF has climbed 15.7% and the S&P 500 has gained 8.7%.