Research in Motion CEO asks shareholders to be patient

Research In Motion chief executive Thorstein Heins. Heins asked shareholders to be patient but said he was not satisfied with the company’s performance.
(Photo courtesy of Research In Motion)

The chief executive of the BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has asked shareholders to be patient as the company moves forward with its delay of BlackBerry 10.

Thorsten Heins, in the meeting of shareholders at Research In Motion’s headquarters in Waterloo, in the Canadian province of Ontario, acknowledged the weakness the company had in the smartphone market in North America. “I want to assure you that I am not satisfied with the performance of the company over the past year,” Heins said according to a report from the CBC. “The benefits [from the key enterprise space] will take time to have a meaningful impact on our performance. As I’ve said we do expect the next several quarters to be challenging as we go through the transition to BlackBerry10.”

A shareholder in the company, Vic Alboni, the CEO of Jaguar Financial, told the CBC that the board and management had issues with results. “The problem with management and the board is it is all about optimism, as opposed to results,” Alboni said. “What shareholders want is results and they want the stock price to reflect the valuable assets that RIM has. But those valuable assets will wither and die if the right strategic moves are not taken.”

A couple of weeks ago, Research In Motion announced the delay of the BlackBerry 10 to early in 2013, in addition to cutting 5,000 jobs from its global workforce. Heins said at the time according to a BBC report that the BlackBerry 10 was a priority. “Our top priority going forward is the successful launch of our first Blackberry 10 device, which we now anticipate will occur in the first quarter of calendar 2013,” Heins said.