LPL Financial LLC Raises Stock Position in BlackBerry Limited (NYSE:BB)

LPL Financial LLC lifted its holdings in shares of BlackBerry Limited (NYSE:BB) by 92.7% during the 4th quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 192,824 shares of the company’s stock after purchasing an additional 92,738 shares during the quarter. LPL Financial LLC’s holdings in BlackBerry were worth $729,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also made changes to their positions in the business. Barclays PLC boosted its stake in shares of BlackBerry by 60.2% in the 3rd quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 249,218 shares of the company’s stock valued at $652,000 after buying an additional 93,651 shares during the period. Milestone Asset Management LLC acquired a new stake in BlackBerry in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $557,000. Connor Clark & Lunn Investment Management Ltd. lifted its stake in BlackBerry by 41.9% in the fourth quarter. Connor Clark & Lunn Investment Management Ltd. now owns 13,669,715 shares of the company’s stock worth $51,856,000 after acquiring an additional 4,039,483 shares during the last quarter. Alberta Investment Management Corp grew its holdings in BlackBerry by 60.5% during the 4th quarter. Alberta Investment Management Corp now owns 644,900 shares of the company’s stock worth $2,448,000 after acquiring an additional 243,000 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Thompson Davis & CO. Inc. purchased a new stake in shares of BlackBerry in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $641,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 54.48% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities research analysts have recently issued reports on the stock. Canaccord Genuity Group decreased their price objective on shares of BlackBerry from $4.75 to $4.25 and set a “hold” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, April 3rd. CIBC decreased their price target on BlackBerry from $7.00 to $6.00 and set an “outperformer” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, April 3rd. StockNews.com raised BlackBerry from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Friday, April 11th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada set a $3.75 target price on BlackBerry in a research report on Thursday, April 3rd. Six research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, two have issued a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, BlackBerry has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $4.12.

BlackBerry Stock Up 2.4 %

BlackBerry stock opened at $3.17 on Wednesday. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $4.19 and a 200-day simple moving average of $3.58. The company has a market capitalization of $1.89 billion, a P/E ratio of -14.39 and a beta of 1.30. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.27, a quick ratio of 1.37 and a current ratio of 1.37. BlackBerry Limited has a fifty-two week low of $2.01 and a fifty-two week high of $6.24.

BlackBerry (NYSE:BB) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, April 2nd. The company reported $0.03 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.02 by $0.01. The company had revenue of $141.70 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $137.56 million. BlackBerry had a negative return on equity of 2.02% and a negative net margin of 21.16%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was down 7.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $0.03 earnings per share. Equities research analysts expect that BlackBerry Limited will post -0.03 earnings per share for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, SVP Jennifer Armstrong-Owen sold 29,940 shares of the stock in a transaction on Friday, April 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $2.99, for a total transaction of $89,520.60. Following the completion of the sale, the senior vice president now directly owns 42,398 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $126,770.02. This trade represents a 41.39 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, CAO Jay P. Chai sold 24,425 shares of BlackBerry stock in a transaction on Friday, January 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of $4.19, for a total transaction of $102,340.75. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders have sold 61,641 shares of company stock valued at $214,365. Insiders own 0.34% of the company’s stock.

BlackBerry Profile

BlackBerry Limited provides intelligent security software and services to enterprises and governments worldwide. The company operates through three segments: Cybersecurity, IoT, and Licensing and Other. The company offers CylanceENDPOINT, an integrated endpoint security solution; CylanceGUARD, a managed detection and response solution; CylanceEDGE, an AI-powered continuous authentication zero trust network access solution; CylanceINTELLIGENCE, a contextual cyber threat intelligence service; BlackBerry Dynamics offers a development platform and secure container for mobile applications; BlackBerry Workspaces a secure Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) solution; BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) Enterprise, an enterprise-grade secure instant messaging solution for messaging, voice and video; BlackBerry SecuSUITE is a certified, multi-OS voice and text messaging solution; BlackBerry AtHoc, a secure networked critical event management solution; and BlackBerry unified endpoint management (UEM) solutions.