BlackBerry Finally Reveals Who Bought Its $300 Million Real Estate Portfolio
BlackBerry today revealed that Spear Street Capital was the company who acquired the vast majority of the smartphone maker’s real estate portfolio.
The Waterloo-based company also revealed the value of the property sold to Spear Street was just over $300 million.
Under the terms of the transaction, BlackBerry will sell more than three million square feet of space as well as vacant lands. BlackBerry will lease back a portion of the space.
SEE ALSO: Michael Wekerle Buys Former BlackBerry Building in Waterloo
The real estate sale is part of BlackBerry’s bid to return to profitability. CEO John Chen recently cited BlackBerry’s road to recovery as an “eight-quarter journey.”
“The first thing I have to do is to get into profitability, as well as cash flow breaking even,” he said.
Chen believes BlackBerry can be cash-flow positive from operations by the end of this fiscal year. Then within the next fiascal year, he believes the company can be profitable, something it hasn’t been for a long while.
BlackBerry in March reported a fourth-quarter loss of $423 million, down from a profit of $98 million in the year-ago quarter. Selling 3.4 million smartphones—more than two-thirds of which were legacy BlackBerry 7 devices—during the quarter, revenue came in at only $976 million, a steep fall from the $2.68 billion it generated in the year-ago quarter.
