Blackberry CEO on Why His Company Beat Earnings Estimates
Blackberry’s turnaround is in full swing, and the company’s CEO told Cheddar he’s expanding its software, cybersecurity, and automotive services to drive growth in 2018.
“Our software are now embedded into a lot of the chipset or optimizers of people like Qualcomm,” John Chen said in an interview Wednesday. “The strength comes in from that.”
Blackberry shares jumped to near three-year highs Wednesday, after the company reported earnings and revenue in the latest quarter above analyst estimates. While sales fell 25 percent from a year ago, the drop wasn’t as bad as expected. And profit came in at 3 cents a share, while analysts were expecting the company to break even.
The company was a pioneer in the smartphone market, but lost ground to rivals like the iPhone and Samsung products. But it’s shifted into new areas.
Chen said that, while Blackberry has been in the auto industry for about a decade, it began making a “major push” into the space four years ago.
“We focused on designing new components of cars like lane-changing, advanced driver assistance, telematics that talk to the internet,” he said.
The chief exec says 60 million cars on the road currently operate on Blackberry software.
Umbilical cord blood banking platform Anja Health raised $4.5 million dollars in a seed round led by Seven Seven Six, a venture capital firm founded by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Anja Health offers a personalized, doctor-backed cord blood bank, which lets new parents freeze stem cells from their child's umbilical cord so they can be used to treat diseases in the future. It's a process Anja has called 'Hollywood's best-kept secret,' as celebrities like Kylie Jenner, Serena Williams, and more have all banked their umbilical cord blood. Kathryn Cross, the founder of Anja Health, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Catching you up on what you missed in today's news. Elon Musk has increased his commitment to purchase Twitter to $33.5 billion, Apple is raising its hourly wages for retail stores to compete for talent, and Roblox has announced that it will be partnering with the medically prescribed video game ‘Endeavor’ to help treat patients with ADHD.
After learning that the suspect in the Uvalde school shooting posted about his intentions on Facebook, activists are urging social networks to make changes. Lena Derhally, a licensed psychotherapist and author of "The Facebook Narcissist," joined Cheddar News to discuss the role social media plays in school shootings. "They're not really invested in taking down hateful content," she said about social platforms."In regards to the shooting, it was 15 minutes before that actual threat. It would be pretty hard for a social media company to trace that threat that quickly. But what they can do better is take down threats and hateful content much faster and more than they're doing now."
Esper Bionics CEO Dima Gazda breaks down how they're creating a mind-controlled bionic hand that guest smarter the more you use it, and what this innovation means for the future of the prosthetics industry.
On this episode of Cheddar Innovates: Brightseed Co-Founder breaks down what plant bioactives are, and how they're using the latest technology to study human's biological connections with plants; Esper Bionics CEO breaks down how they re creating a mind-controlled bionic hand that guest smarter the more you use it; Cheddar gets a look at Curiosity Stream's 'Capturing A Black Hole In Our Milky Way.'
