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Research in Motion will live to see BlackBerry 10.
The embattled company reported second-quarter results that topped Wall Street’s low expectations, while leaving it with enough cash to launch its long-delayed line of new phones.
The stock surged as much as 22 percent in late trading after the report. Earlier the shares rose 2 percent to close at $7.14.
RIM’s $2.9 billion in revenue — while down sharply from $4.2 billion a year ago — still beat analysts’ forecasts for $2.5 billion.
Also the company’s $235 million loss, or 45 cents a share, was not “nearly as bad as people expected,” said analyst Colin Gillis of BGC Partners.
Excluding one-time items, the per-share loss was 27 cents. On that basis analysts had expected a 46-cent loss.
What’s more, RIM grew its cash pile from $2.2 billion to $2.3 billion.
RIM is trying to hold on through the holidays while its main rivals Apple and Google’s Android push ahead with new mobile devices.
RIM aims to release its next-generation BlackBerry 10 phones in the first quarter next year.
Industry watchers are skeptical that the new phones can even revive the company’s fortunes, but at least RIM has a fighting chance.
“The cash shows customers, developers and partners that they are going to be around,” he said.
RIM needs developers to build BlackBerry apps so that the platform can compete with the Apple iPhone and Google’s Android devices.
The Toronto company also defied predictions that it would lose subscribers for the first time during the quarter, adding 2 million users for a total of 80 million worldwide.
Still, it sold fewer BlackBerrys — 7.4 million compared with 7.8 million the prior quarter.
“Make no mistake about it, we understand that we have much more work to do,” Heins said in a statement yesterday. “But we are making the organizational changes to drive improvements across the company.”