Amid a Reuters report, which cited sources saying that Blackberry has reportedly been in talks with Samsung for a $7.8 Billion “buy-out”, Blackberry did enjoy a moment of strong fortunen, largely because of this very rumour.
As soon as the word about Blackberry’s buy-out got-out, the Canadian smartphone giant saw its shares rising more than 30% their initial price. Such success is rare for Blackberry these days and no matter how it came, such a spike in share showed how investors were responding to the entire deal.
But wait ! What happens when you deny speculations on a deal with Samsung ? Well, once you deny it, your shares will plunge by half of what they had risen earlier, and will continue to drop further. Blackberry’s share, post acquisition-denial, dropped by more than 15%. The share reprieved a bit later, to close at $10.78, a 14.41% loss from its peak high.
Earlier today, Reuters had reported that reeling under the pressure to revive a dying brand, Blackberry has ‘recently’ been in talks with Korean giant Samsung for a possible buy-out. Reuters had pegged the buy-out amount to be somewhere near $7.5 Billion.
Reuters further details out the transaction, saying that Samsung had proposed an initial price range of $13.35 to $15.49 per share. This represents a premium of 38 percent to 60 percent over BlackBerry’s current trading price.
However, the entire speculation came down when Blackberry released an official statement saying that it
has not engaged in discussions with Samsung with respect to any possible offer to purchase BlackBerry.
Samsung too denied such speculations, terming them ‘groundless. A Samsung spokeswoman said,
Media reports of the acquisition are groundless.
The Reuters report gained even more traction when Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail reported that Blackberry has in fact turned down many acquisition offers in recent months since investors and board believed that the company will bounce back.
While Blackberry may still be far far away from the glory it enjoyed earlier, but it definitely has seen an improvement under its CEO John Chen’s restructuring efforts. The company, which recently launched a revived Blackberry-trademark phone, Classic, reported postive results for the very same model.
Image / Reuters / Mike Segar
