Stock Traders Buy High Volume of BlackBerry Call Options (NYSE:BB)

BlackBerry Limited (NYSE:BB) was the target of unusually large options trading on Wednesday. Stock investors acquired 59,590 call options on the stock. This is an increase of approximately 80% compared to the typical volume of 33,115 call options.

Institutional Trading of BlackBerry

Several large investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Citigroup Inc. boosted its stake in BlackBerry by 8.1% during the third quarter. Citigroup Inc. now owns 282,592 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,344,000 after buying an additional 21,100 shares during the last quarter. Bank of Nova Scotia Trust Co. increased its holdings in BlackBerry by 114.3% during the 3rd quarter. Bank of Nova Scotia Trust Co. now owns 30,000 shares of the company’s stock worth $141,000 after purchasing an additional 16,000 shares during the period. Hawk Ridge Capital Management LP purchased a new position in shares of BlackBerry in the 3rd quarter valued at about $21,316,000. Covalis Capital LLP purchased a new position in shares of BlackBerry in the 3rd quarter valued at about $7,288,000. Finally, Gotham Asset Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of BlackBerry by 113.1% in the 3rd quarter. Gotham Asset Management LLC now owns 291,368 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,372,000 after acquiring an additional 154,632 shares during the last quarter. 54.48% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

BlackBerry Stock Down 1.3 %

Shares of BB stock opened at $2.21 on Thursday. The stock has a 50 day moving average of $2.77 and a 200 day moving average of $2.97. The company has a current ratio of 1.43, a quick ratio of 1.43 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.25. The stock has a market cap of $1.30 billion, a P/E ratio of -9.21 and a beta of 1.37. BlackBerry has a twelve month low of $2.20 and a twelve month high of $5.75.

BlackBerry (NYSE:BB) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, June 26th. The company reported ($0.03) EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.04) by $0.01. The business had revenue of $144.00 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $132.05 million. BlackBerry had a negative return on equity of 0.24% and a negative net margin of 15.24%. The business’s revenue was down 61.4% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $0.04 earnings per share. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that BlackBerry will post -0.09 EPS for the current year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Separately, Royal Bank of Canada reaffirmed a “sector perform” rating and set a $3.00 target price on shares of BlackBerry in a report on Thursday, April 4th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating and six have assigned a hold rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $4.08.

BlackBerry Company Profile

BlackBerry Limited provides intelligent security software and services to enterprises and governments worldwide. The company operates through three segments: Cybersecurity, IoT, and Licensing and Other. The company offers CylanceENDPOINT, an integrated endpoint security solution; CylanceGUARD, a managed detection and response solution; CylanceEDGE, an AI-powered continuous authentication zero trust network access solution; CylanceINTELLIGENCE, a contextual cyber threat intelligence service; BlackBerry Dynamics offers a development platform and secure container for mobile applications; BlackBerry Workspaces a secure Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) solution; BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) Enterprise, an enterprise-grade secure instant messaging solution for messaging, voice and video; BlackBerry SecuSUITE is a certified, multi-OS voice and text messaging solution; BlackBerry AtHoc, a secure networked critical event management solution; and BlackBerry unified endpoint management (UEM) solutions.