What Do Hedge Funds Think About BlackBerry Ltd (BBRY)?

The largest shareholder of BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) remains Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa, Chairman and CEO of Fairfax. At the end of 2014, Fairfax held 46.65 million shares valued at $512.13 million. In 2013, Watsa tried to acquire BlackBerry for $4.70 billion, but the deal failed and the company raised around $1.0 billion in debt, including $250 million from Fairfax. Another investor betting on BlackBerry is Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies, who raised his stake by more than 400% during the fourth quarter to 3.27 million shares, while David E. Shaw trimmed his exposure by 25% to 5.59 million shares. However, both Simons and Shaw, with huge equity portfolios, have allocated relatively small amounts for their investments in BlackBerry, which represent just 0.07% and 0.08% of their equity portfolios respectively, versus Watsa’s stake that accounts for 33% of Fairfax’s 13F portfolio.

On the other hand, Nelson Obus seems more confident about BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY)’s prospects, as his fund Wynnefield allocated almost 10% of its equity portfolio to the company. Wynnefield disclosed a $22.95 million stake that contains 2.09 million shares in its latest 13F filing. J. Carlo Cannell’s Cannell Capital raised its stake by 10% to 998,100 shares during the October-December period, the $10.96 million position accounting for 4% of its equity portfolio.

As was mentioned earlier, BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY)’s two latest smartphones still require some time in order to show in BlackBerry’s numbers. However, so far, both models received many positive reviews from users. The comeback of physical keyboards on smartphones has also received a warm welcome from early users and the security features of the phones are also not something that can be overlooked. In addition, BlackBerry recently rolled out an update to its BlackBerry OS. One of the main features of the update is the compatibility with Amazon’s Appstore, which solves BlackBerry’s previous issues with limited app availability.

Aside from Passport and Classic, BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) also offers two premium smartphones, built in collaboration with Porsche Design, which also sport a physical QWERTY keyboard.

Disclosure: None