Who’s betting on BlackBerry?

I can’t name any techies who are betting on BlackBerry, but I can point to a few investors on Seeking Alpha who are:

• It was revealed late last week in a regulatory filing that Dan Loeb, head of the $13 billion-or-so hedge fund Third Point, bought a 2% stake in the company (valued at about $92.5 million) during 4Q 2013, making him one of the top ten shareholders. Loeb is described in Financial Times as an “activist hedge fund manager”, which means that he’s one of those people that uses the clout that comes with owning a significant number of voting shares to pressure management into doing things that lead to higher share prices and returns. BlackBerry’s stock price went up 5% in response to the news.
• Betting Big on BlackBerry: A self-described contrarian analyst going by the nom de plume “Quoth the Raven”, writes “BlackBerry (BBRY) is one of the largest positions in my portfolio”, cites a list of accurate predictions that he or she has made about the company, and explains why he or she is “cautiously optimistic” about its future. “Quoth the Raven” has written other articles that say that BlackBerry has a future, the most notable being BlackBerry: Rebirth of the Original Gangster.
• George Kesarios, another self-identified contrarian, argues that BlackBerry “is worth a minimum of $20 a share, if it stops bleeding”. It almost sounds like a tautology (“the patient will live if he doesn’t die”), but he says that if the company can manage to cut its losses, its revenue from its MDM software and services can bring in nearly $3 billion a year alone, without any hardware sales at all.

I shouldn’t have to remind you that the bets an investor makes and the bets that a mobile technologist makes are very different creatures. These Seeking Alpha analysts are in the business of getting as much bang out of their investment buck as possible, while readers of this blog are in the business of getting as much functionality out of their tech as possible. These rumbling from the investment community are worth noting because they give some hints as to what BlackBerry may do in the future, which the investors seem to hope is to give up hardware and concentrate on mobile device management and security, which are sure to be a big deal over the next few years.

Nor should I have to remind you that none of this should be construed as investment advice: you pays your money and you takes your chances, and nowhere did we didn’t tell you what to bet on.