A classic BlackBerry device.
Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images
The BlackBerry meme play has returned with a vengeance.
In the first four weeks of January, BlackBerry stock (ticker: BB) nearly quadrupled, hitting a 10-year high, apparently driven by aggressively bullish retail investors in the Wall Street Bets group on Reddit—not unlike the sharp rallies in shares of the videogame retailer GameStop (GME) and the movie theater operator AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC).
BlackBerry hit a multiyear record high of $25.10 on Jan. 27—but it didn’t stay there for long, falling back to single digits by late March.
But now the meme stocks are back: On Tuesday, AMC rallied 23%, to $32.04, GameStop gained 12%, to $249.02, and BlackBerry jumped 15%, to $11.56, its highest level in more than two months. At midmorning on Wednesday, BlackBerry was up another 11% to $12.85.
While many people may still remember BlackBerry for its once-ubiquitous smartphones, the company long ago stopped making them. BlackBerry now is primarily a software business, with a focus on both cybersecurity and software for the automotive industry.
The rally in part could reflect investors trying to spur a short squeeze. There were about 50.2 million BlackBerry shares sold short as of May 14, about 9% of the company’s shares outstanding, and equal to close to four days of average trading volume in the stock over the past three months.
For the January 2022 fiscal year, analysts expect BlackBerry to post revenue of $824 million, down about 10% from the $919 million reported in the previous year. The Street expects a loss for the year of about five cents a share. With today’s move, BlackBerry has a market cap of about $6.5 billion.
Just four of the 16 analysts who follow BlackBerry have a Buy rating on the stock. The average price target on BlackBerry shares is $7.75, and no analyst has a target above $10.
BlackBerry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Write to Eric J. Savitz at [email protected]
