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RIM sees FY12 Q2 sales slide 10% to $4.2 billion, with income down 53% to $329 million

Shipped 10.6 million phones, 200,000 PlayBook tablets

RIM sees FY12 Q2 sales slide 10% to $4.2 billion, with income down 53% to $329 million
By , Contributing Editor
Research in Motion (TSE:RIM) has announced its Q2 FY2012 results for the three months ending 27 August, 2011.

Revenue was $4.2 billion, down 10 percent compared to the same period 12 months ago.

Sales were split 73 percent from hardware, 24 percent from services and 3 percent from software and other revenue.

Net income (GAAP) was $329 million, down 53 percent year-on-year.

During the quarter, RIM shipped around 10.6 million BlackBerry smartphones and 200,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets. In Q1, it shipped 13.2 million phones.

Still, the company said its subscriber base grew 40 percent year-on-year to over 70 million.

Forward looking

"We successfully launched a range of BlackBerry 7 smartphones around the world during the latter part of the second quarter, and we are seeing strong sell-through and customer interest for these new products," said Jim Balsillie, RIM's co-CEO.

"We will continue to build on the success of the BlackBerry 7 launch to drive the business as we focus our development efforts on delivering the next generation QNX-based mobile platform next year."

The company said overall unit shipments during the quarter were slightly below forecasts due to lower than expected demand for older handsets.

Hey, big spender

During the period, the company invested around $780 million as part of the consortium that acquired Nortel's patents. It also spent around $118 million in terms of its cost optimisation program, including employee termination costs and office closures.

RIM ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $851 million, down from $2 billion at the end of the previous quarter, partly due because of acquisitions including €87 million spent on mobile gaming platform Scoreloop, and the Nortel IP deal.

Cashflow during the quarter was $1 billion, compared to $1.6 billion over the previous three months.

No mention was made of shareholder demands over the company's joint co-CEO executive structure or - in light of the Google-Motorola deal - that it should sell its patents.

[source: RIM (PDF)]
Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.