RIMM: Maintain HOLD After Playbook Demo

This article was placed on behalf of the U.S. based equity research effort of institutional broker and investment bank Canaccord Genuity. It was part of a series of articles developed under an agreement with forbes.com to work with a variety of contributors and assist them in delivering actionable investment ideas each week. The site, forbes.com is one of the top 500 sites in the world with nearly 10 million subscribers and approximately 100 million page views a month.

Following a product demonstration with Research In Motion’s (RIMM) senior product managers for the Blackberry 2.0 Playbook and Blackberry 7.1, Canaccord Genuity technology analyst Michael Walkley maintained his HOLD rating and $15 price target on the company. Mr. Walkley said:

“While we were impressed with the improvements BlackBerry 2.0 offers, we believe it still lags competing tablet offerings. With competing OEMs continuing to introduce high-end smartphone products on more established software ecosystems and low-cost Android smartphones pressuring RIM’s international margins, we believe sales and earnings will remain under pressure until BlackBerry 10 smartphones launch in late C2012.”

He added, “While we believe RIM management is focused on improved product execution during 2012, we believe new BB 10 smartphones will launch into an even more competitive smartphone market, as we anticipate innovative new Android LTE smartphones from multiple OEMs, a significant increase in Windows smartphone offerings from Nokia and other OEMs, and a refreshed LTE iPhone 5 by the time BB 10 smartphones launch.”

Amazon Summits A Dow That No Longer Exists

At the end of February Walgreen’s Boots Alliance was unceremoniously removed from the vaunted Dow Jones Industrial Index and Amazon

Financial Institutions Feeling the Crunch in Countdown to CECL Implementation

I was retained by Big Four accounting and consulting firm KPMG to assist them in their thought leadership efforts centered on changing accounting regulations. In this case, the Financial Accounting Standards Board or FASB had instituted new rules on the measurement of current and expected credit losses, i.e. CECL, that would require massive reorganization of financial reporting for the largest financial services organizations in the world. This thought leadership piece concerned the results of a survey among C-suite executives about their state of preparedness in the final countdown to the CECL implementation.

Securitizing Structured Settlement Payment Streams: A Primer

Fall 2012. This article was written with Stefano Sola and Phil Donahue, executives at JGWPT Holdings. We were engaged by JGWPT to assist them
in publishing the article below for The Journal Of Structured Finance.

Is The Media Biased?

This story is from our February 2024 update newsletter that offers communications insights, and hopefully, some amusing diversion.

David R. Evanson, LLC