Dallas, Texas 09/24/2013 (Financialstrend) – Watsa’s Fairfax consortium has bid to take BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) private for $4.7 billion. The company has been up for sale since August and market watchers are saying that in most probability there will be no counter bid from anyone else. This bid works out to approximately $9/share.
BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) has been facing a torrid time since primarily because it lost its market share to the iOS and Android run phones. Despite the fact that it launched the Blackberry 10 OS and touchscreen phone, it could not make a dent in the market that was already up to the hilt with its contender’s phones. It largely relied on corporate and professional consumers and a major chunk of its phones were sold in these segments. The company’s shares had moved above the $148 range in 2008 June.
Monday’s trading
In Monday’s trading BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) stock climbed by 1.09%. The shares opened at a price of $8.26 which rose to an intraday high of $9.20 and dropped to a close of $8.82. Around 110.68M shares were traded in Monday’s session. An average-volume of 31.00M shares was traded over 30 days. The shares have a 52-week low of $6.22 and their 52-week high stands at $18.32. BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) market capitalization is $4.62 billion.
The deadline
The company has until 4 November to look for better offers and the Fairfax group also has the right to match those offers if and when they come up. The group is looking for financing from BMO Capital Markets and Bank of America Merrill Lynch for the completion of this deal. The statement that came from the smartphone maker did not state who the consortium members were. However, the buzz is that the well-loaded Canadian pension funds may be some of the members.
