BlackBerry ‘Bullish’ on Future, Despite ‘Rough Year’ for Its Stock, Says CEO

BlackBerry CEO John Chen acknowledges it was “a rough year for our share price and our equity value,” but he and the board are “extremely bullish about our going-forward plan,” he told the company’s annual shareholder meeting virtually Tuesday. The ambition is to become the “must-have software provider for endpoints,” said Chen. BlackBerry sees a $38 billion market opportunity in helping “people that build devices” for the smart home or smart city, he said. The compound annual growth rate of the software business has been about 20% the past four years, said Chen. “We're pretty pleased with that number,” but “we're working very hard to make it higher than that,” he said. The “technology lab” was created about a year ago, he said. “We’ve done a lot of good stuff,” including the automotive cybersecurity tech it demonstrated at CES to “predict certain fault conditions in the car,” he said. Shares closed 3.5% lower Wednesday at $4.92.