Blackberry has announced that it’s selling its non-core patents for $600 million to Catapult. A “Delaware” shell company was set up called Catapult to acquire the patents. Why set up a shell company just to acquire patents? I would like to know the inside baseball on that and why is really buying BB’s patents. The shell company appears to have ties to Third Eye Capital.
BlackBerry Agrees to Sell Legacy Patents for $600M
BlackBerry Limited (NYSE: BB; TSX: BB), announced today that it has entered into a patent sale agreement with Catapult IP Innovations Inc., a Delaware company, pursuant to which BlackBerry has agreed to sell substantially all of its non-core patent assets to Catapult for total consideration of $600 million.
Patents that are essential to BlackBerry’s current core business operations are excluded from the transaction. BlackBerry will receive a license back to the patents being sold, which relate primarily to mobile devices, messaging and wireless networking. This transaction will not impact customers’ use of any of BlackBerry’s products, solutions or services.
Catapult is a special purpose vehicle formed to acquire the BlackBerry patent assets. Catapult’s principal funding for the acquisition will be a $450 million senior secured term loan, for which it has received $400 million of conditional commitments from a lending syndicate led by Toronto-based Third Eye Capital that includes a Canadian pension fund.
At closing, BlackBerry will receive $450 million in cash and a promissory note in the principal amount of $150 million. The promissory note will be secured by a second lien on the assets of the purchaser and will be subordinated to the rights of the senior lending syndicate. The promissory note will be payable in five equal annual installments of $30 million in cash commencing on the third anniversary of the closing date, provided that the senior loan is not in default.
Completion of the transaction is conditional upon, among other things, satisfaction of all regulatory conditions under the Hart–Scott–Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act in the United States and the Investment Canada Act. This process could take up to 210 days.
BlackBerry has filed a Current Report on Form 8-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with its entry into the patent sale agreement, which contains further information including a description of the financing conditions relating to the transaction.
Black Sesame Technologies and BlackBerry QNX Team Up to Create Safe, Reliable Autonomous Driving Solution for Chinese Automakers
On January 20, 2022, Leading autonomous driving computing chip maker Black Sesame Technologies (Black Sesame) has selected BlackBerry® QNX® technology to power its latest chipset developed for autonomous driving. The combination of the BlackBerry (NYSE: BB; TSX: BB) and Black Sesame technologies is slated to be ready for mass production by a leading Chinese automaker in 2022.
Black Sesame Technologies has expertise in deploying Artificial Intelligence (AI) for autonomous driving functions that include image processing, perception algorithms, and advanced System On Chip (SoC) integration for the automotive market. Combining BlackBerry QNX’s certified software platform with Black Sesame’s intelligent, high-performance, automotive-grade A1000 chipset provides a powerful solution for the Chinese autonomous drive market.
“We are honored to announce our cooperation with BlackBerry, a company that has won the confidence of many leading automakers around the world for its foundational mission-critical SW platform technology,” said Rock Yang, Chief Marketing Officer & Co-Founder, Black Sesame Technologies. “As the first domestic China-based AI chip manufacturer to receive the SGS (a leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company) functional safety compliance certification, Black Sesame will combine our technical expertise with the performance and safety of the QNX Operating System to create an industry-leading compute and AI platform for autonomous driving.”
“BlackBerry has deep expertise and a strong track record in providing leading-edge software platform solutions that deliver safety, reliability and security that make us a trusted partner for the automotive industry,” said Dhiraj Handa, VP, Asia Pacific region at BlackBerry. “We are pleased to collaborate with Black Sesame as they start to deploy their AI-enabled A1000 chipset for autonomous driving into mass production vehicles.”
📺 Blackberry BB Stock Predictions & Analysis for 2022!
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH-M6g2ns58[/embedyt]📉 BB Stock Technical Analysis
The short-term trend is negative, as is the long-term trend. BB is part of the Software industry. There are 354 other stocks in this industry, BB did better than 50% of them. BB is currently making a new 52 week low. This is a very bad signal. BB is lagging the S&P500 Index which is trading in the middle of its 52-week range. Prices have been falling strongly lately, it is better to avoid new long positions here.
There is a resistance zone ranging from 9.05 to 9.44. This zone is formed by a combination of multiple trend lines and important moving averages in multiple time frames. There is resistance at 11.68 from a horizontal line in the daily time frame. There is also resistance at 14.10 from a horizontal line in the weekly time frame.
The technical rating of BB is bad and it also does not present a quality setup at the moment. BB stock has a Setup Rating of 3 out of 10. Price movement has been a little bit too volatile to find a nice entry and exit point. It is probably a good idea to wait for a consolidation first. Click here to sign up for email alerts on when BB stock consolidates and has a Setup Rating of 8 or higher.
