John Chen
Analyst · Cross Research. Your line is open
Thank you, Chris good morning everybody. As Chris has stated earlier, I will only reference non-GAAP numbers in my summary. So BlackBerry had a very, very positive quarter and as well as the fiscal 2019. Let me start with the fiscal 2019 results. For fiscal 2019, we delivered upon all our financial outlooks, including 10% total software and services revenue growth. Double digit percentage total software and services billing growth, we reported $0.24 in earnings per share versus $0.14 last fiscal year. And we generated $83 million in reported free cash flow. In the quarter we achieved 8% -- now it's for the Q4. In the quarter Q4, we achieved 8% year-over-year total company revenue growth. This was the first time in many years driven by four consecutive years of software and services growth that overcame the quarter-to-quarter decline in handset revenue and service SS fees. This is where the violins come in. We believe total company revenue growth is a significant milestone to both the company and our shareholders. This profitable growth is a clear indication that we have successfully pivot to become an enterprise software company. This quarter results are due to the achievement of the record high in total software and services revenue enabling BlackBerry to exceed the consensus expectation in both revenue and earnings per share for the quarter. Finally, we completed our acquisition of Cylance. Cylance is a next generation endpoint security technology, which participates in the fast growing market and it provide technologies that is shaping the future direction of cyber security. The AI and machine learning capabilities we added are synergistic with our long-term vision for BlackBerry Spark, our integrated secure communication platform for the IoT. Now let me provide some highlights for the fourth fiscal quarter. Total company revenue came in as $257 million, total software and services revenue was $248 million, as I mentioned before this is a new record quarterly high. Total software and services billing grew a solid double digit percentage year-over-year for both the fiscal quarter as well as for the fiscal. Gross margin came in at 82%, operating income was $58 million, positive for the 12 consecutive quarter. Operating margin was 23%, an increase of 9 percentage point from last quarter. This is the highest operating margin reported by the company since fiscal 2011. EPS came in at $0.11, total ending cash and investment after the closing of the acquisition of Cylance came in as $1 billion. Next, I will cover some significant highlights by business. Fourth quarter enterprise software and services revenue declined 20% year-over-year, primarily due to the impact of the ASC 606 accounting. You may recall that in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018, we reported approximately $30 million a perpetual license that we recognized upfront prior to the 606. It is worth noting that this is the last quarter of year-over-year comparative impact related to the implementation of the ASC 606. As we look at billings and other operational metrics in the quarter, we expect to see growth in enterprise software and services in fiscal 2020. Billings grew strongly on a sequential basis, the strength in the quarter came mainly from financial services and government vertical. In the financial services vertical, we received over 400 orders from banking customer from all around the world, which includes [indiscernible], BLC and Bank of Oman. In the government vertical, some notable orders received including the Austria Federal Computing Center, The Defense Logistic Agency, The Police Service of Scotland, Public Service and Procurement Canada, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, just to name a few. After the quarter we made two major announcement that underscore our continued progress in the government sector. First, we were selected by NATO for our secure voices solution, SecuSUITE for government. Second, we announced the creation of Blackberry Government Solutions, which is the Washington DC based subsidiary that will deepen our reach within the United States government and ensure that all our company’s solutions and products are FedRAMP authorize. This is a model that we could see deploy with other countries in the future of course. As we have demonstrated consistently throughout the fiscal year, we were well positioned to not only compete, but to win in the regulated industry. Our strongest revenue performer within the enterprise software and services in the quarter was our UEM, The Unified Employee Management business, which grew at a high single digit percentage on a sequential basis. Enterprise software and services deferred revenue also grew in the fourth quarter, since we have largely transitioned to a ratable revenue model. We're still on track to release the first module for the BlackBerry Spark platform this September. As a reminder, Blackberry Spark is our integrated secure communication platform designed to address the hyper connected needs in the IoT markets. So let me move to Blackberry Technology Solutions business. Fourth quarter BTS revenue came in -- increased 20% year-over-year. Growth in BTS is mainly driven by Blackberry, QNX, the software development license services and royalty revenue. They all grew year-over-year as we continue to be selected for designs by our customers in both the automotive as well as the general embedded market. In the quarter we had a total of 22 design wins, of which 14 were in automotive. Three of the wins were for infotainment and the remaining 11 wins will across ADAS which is Advanced Driver Assist, digital cockpits, instrument cluster and other non-infotainment applications. Based on one of our recent wins with a prominent tier 1 supplier, we are seeing an emerging trend in the automotive software architecture, where domain controllers are consolidating function that has historically been distributed across many ECU, the Electronic Control Units. This trend is constructive for Blackberry QNX. Our safety certified operating system and hypervisor are very relevant for this current market demand. During the quarter, we announced an investment of C$310 million over 10 years to develop the next generation of safe and secure embedded software for the future automobile and other enterprise markets and other autonomous platforms. Our investment continues to increase the breath of our product and that are necessary to serve the active safety and autonomous platform now, as well as in the future. I believe this investment is going to help Blackberry to stay ahead of the competition and a brief -- so that's all we have for the -- Radar. And now I'm going to move on to Radar. In the quarter we added eight new customers including Fleets, [ph] Mexico, continuing our international expansion. We also received repeated orders from nine existing customers, including Bimbo Bakeries, USA and Faxovan [ph]. We are actively engaged with a number of very large companies in our pipeline and we look to continue to ramp up volume. In our business regarding licensing IP and other revenue, which in the future, by the way, we're going to refer it as licensing. Throughout the core -- from now -- I guess from now till perpetuity. We continue to execute well against a strategy to monetize our IP and technology portfolio. Our licensing business performance in the fourth quarter result in an increase in revenue of 71% year-over-year. The performance was driven by the closer opportunities we have actually highlighted and have been discussing with you early in the fiscal year that we were all working on. We expect a steady annual revenue contribution from this business. Based on our pipeline, we're working towards a goal of around $270 million in licensing revenue in fiscal year 2020. A brief word on BlackBerry Cylance. Those of you who attended RSA. By the way, we completed the acquisition, the last week of February. Those of you who attended RSA this month, which is March, are aware of our release of CylancePERSONA, which generated a lot of interest as a first proactive protection solution based on individual behavioral characteristics. At RSA, we also announced that Verizon selected BlackBerry Cylance to be part of the managed service -- managed security service portfolio. This partnership strengthen our channel, as well as broaden our reach to Verizon Enterprise and a small medium business customer base. BlackBerry Cylance was also recently recognized by multiple cyber security industry experts for their innovation and leadership, I guess i.e. got a lot of award at RSA. BlackBerry Cylance if off to a bright start and we're very pleased with this acquisition and is a very -- is a positive validations on our investment thesis. Before I turn the call over to Steve, let me provide you a couple of key personnel updates. First, I'm pleased to welcome and announced that Bryan Palma recently joined BlackBerry as our President and Chief Operating Officer. Bryan is an excellent addition to our team. Bryan started his career as a forensic specialist for the United States Secret Service. He was also the first CISO the CISO for Pepsi, VP of Cyber and Security Solutions for Boeing, and a Senior Vice President of an $8 billion professional services business from Cisco. The combination of Bryan’s strong go-to-market focus and a cyber-security background has enabled him to deliver growth at all his prior organization and engagement. As you have seen, we added some strong talent over the last several months with Bryan as well as Stuart in the Cylance team. We plan to add others to our team, all of them will be key for BlackBerry to execute against our strategy for profitable growth. For fiscal 2020, company is now organizing three business units, whose leadership will report to me. Bryan will lead the new BlackBerry IoT business, which will include our enterprise software and services as well as the BlackBerry Technology Solutions team. Stuart, the Co-Founder and CEO of Cylance will lead the BlackBerry Cylance business. Steve Capelli will lead licensing in conjunction with his CFO role. I will now turn the call over to Steve to provide more details about our financial performance.