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Earnings Call: Q3 2019

Dec 20, 2018

Operator

Good morning, welcome to the BlackBerry Fiscal Year 2019 Third Quarter Results Conference Call. My name is Matthew, I'll be your conference moderator for today's call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. We'll be facilitating a brief question and answer session towards the end of the conference. Should you need assistance during the call, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star one. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I'd now like to turn the presentation over to our host for today's call, Christopher Lee, Vice President of Finance. Please go ahead.

Christopher Lee
VP of Finance, BlackBerry

Thank you, Matthew. Welcome to the BlackBerry Fiscal Year 2019 third quarter results conference call. With me on the call today are Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, John Chen, and Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Steve Capelli. After I read our cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements, John will provide a business update, and Steve will then review the financial results. We will open the call for a brief Q&A session. This call is available to the general public via call-in numbers and via webcast in the investor information section at blackberry.com. A replay will also be available on the blackberry.com website. Some of the statements we'll be making today constitute forward-looking statements and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of applicable U.S. and Canadian securities laws. We'll indicate forward-looking statements by using words such as expect, will, should, model, intend, believe, and similar expressions.

Forward-looking statements are based on estimates and assumptions made by the company in light of its experience and its perception of historical trends, current conditions, and expected future developments, as well as other factors that the company believes are relevant. Many factors could cause the company's actual results or performance to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including the risk factors that are discussed in the company's annual information form, which is included in our annual report on Form 40-F and in our MD&A. You should not place undue reliance on the company's forward-looking statements. The company has no intention and undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements except as required by law. As is customary during the call, John and Steve will reference non-GAAP numbers in their summary of our quarterly and annual results.

For a reconciliation between our GAAP and non-GAAP numbers, please see the earnings press release and supplement published earlier today. I will now turn the call over to John.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Thank you, Chris. Christopher. Sorry, Christopher. I didn't know you were named Christopher. Anyway, thank you, Christopher. Good morning, everybody. As Chris stated, I will reference non-GAAP number in my summary for our quarterly results. BlackBerry had an exciting third fiscal quarter. First, we exceeded revenue and earnings per share expectation for the quarter. We deliver year-over-year double-digit percentage growth for total software and service revenue, earnings per share, as well as free cash flow. We also enter into a definitive agreement to acquire Cylance, an artificial intelligence and cybersecurity leader. This acquisition will be a key investment to accelerate BlackBerry's future software and services growth. I will chat more about our acquisition and how it fits into BlackBerry's strategy later on the call. Excuse me. We continue to execute against our fiscal 2019 financial and operating plan. We deliver another good quarter with financial results.

We are tracking to achieve the annual financial guidance we share at the beginning of the year. Let me provide some highlights for the third fiscal quarter. Total revenue came in at $228 million. Total software and services revenue was $219 million. This is a new record quarterly high. Total software and services billing grew year-over-year. Year-to-date fiscal 2019, total company software and services billing grew a double-digit percentage versus the comparable period last year. Gross margin came in at 76%. Operating income was $27 million, positive for the 11th consecutive quarters. Operating margin was 12%, an increase of four percentage points from last quarter. This, by the way, matches the highest operating margin reported by the company since fiscal 2012. EPS came in at $0.05. Total ending cash and investment were $2.4 billion. Next, I will cover some of the significant highlights by business.

First, I start with the BlackBerry Technology Solutions, which includes embedded software and asset tracking. BTS revenue grew 23% year-over-year. Growth in BTS continued to be driven primarily by BlackBerry QNX, where software development license, services, and royalty revenue have all grown double-digit percentage year-over-year. The increase in revenue has been broad-based across various different application in both the automotive as well as the general embedded market. We continue to be chosen by customer from around the world, and the number of design wins in the quarter increased both sequentially as well as year-over-year. I will speak about our automotive business since I know a lot of you are mostly interested by our activities in that vertical. We have five infotainment design wins in the quarter, including a notable win with Aptiv in Asia Pacific.

We also had four design wins in non-infotainment categories like ADAS, instrument cluster, and domain controllers. Two of those wins were for instrument cluster with Denso in North America and with Dalian Eastern Display in Asia Pacific. In addition, after the quarter ended, LeddarTech, a Canadian startup, chose QNX as the operating system for its Auto and Mobility LiDAR Platform. LiDAR stands for light detection and ranging. LeddarTech is known for its production of solid-state LiDAR sensors and was recognized for its innovation at last year's CES, or CES this year, CES 2018. On BlackBerry Radar, our asset tracking business, we are making progress quarter-over-quarter. We added nine new customers, including Bimbo Bakeries USA, Kreilkamp Trucking, and Matson. We also received repeat orders from six existing customers, including Flex Events. A word on our licensing business. Our licensing business continues to perform well.

We have a robust pipeline. We intend to close these licensing opportunity while building upon our recurring revenue base of $40 million-$50 million per quarter. I will discuss our enterprise software business. We achieved 7% sequential revenue growth this quarter. This represents our second consecutive quarter of sequential revenue growth after implementing ASC 606 in the first fiscal quarter of 2019, which moved more of our Enterprise Software and Services revenue to a ratable model. In the quarter, the standout performers was our government business. Some of our notable wins include the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service, the Transportation Security Administration, the TSA, the U.S. Air Force, as well as U.S. Marine Corps.

Our authority to operate has increased from six U.S. government agency last quarter to eight agency this quarter, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as the Department of Energy in the United States. Our BlackBerry AtHoc cloud user base increased by 20% from last quarter to approximately 1.2 million users. Additionally, we saw increased demand for a subscription to the UEM content suite from existing customer. The content suite provides customer with our highest level of security and includes secure document collaboration, which is BlackBerry Workspaces, and the digital rights management. Some brief comments on Spark. As you are aware, Spark is a platform we're developing to secure communication and collaboration among all smart endpoints. Spark brings together all our technology assets and capabilities on a single end-to-end platform.

We believe there are many significant opportunities for Spark to address in the world where endpoints are hyper-connected as well as intelligent, but also requiring absolute data privacy and security. One such opportunity is the smart city and intelligent transportation systems. You see evidence of our vision and leadership with our recent announcement of a security credential management system, symbol as SCMS, that will allow vehicle and infrastructure to exchange information in a trustworthy and private manner using our digital certificates technology. We believe BlackBerry can be at the foundation of smart city in the future autonomous vehicle world, and it's necessary too. Last month, we announced entering into a definitive agreement to acquire Cylance. As I mentioned on our November call, the acquisition will provide BlackBerry with additional cybersecurity capabilities with state-of-the-art AI, artificial intelligence, and as well as machine learning technology.

These cybersecurity capabilities will fit nicely with everything we do. From today with UEM and QNX, and to our future, which including the Spark. It's consistent with a long-term strategic strategy we share with you throughout the fiscal year. Our customers should be excited because our combination will bring complementary technology from cryptology to Knox to AI and know-how that will allow BlackBerry to offer what we believe is the most secure end-to-end data and communication platform. We will go into more details on the technology as well as the use cases at our Analyst Day next April. Before I turn the call over to Steve, let me provide you with a quick update on the acquisition process. We have already received the HSR antitrust clearance. We actually received this early. Our joint voluntary notice has been filed with CFIUS.

We anticipate receiving comments by the end of January 2019, should be closed shortly after. I will now turn the call over to Steve to provide some more details about our financial results and our quarterly performance. Steve?

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

Thank you, John. My comments on our financial performance for the fiscal quarter will be in non-GAAP terms unless specified otherwise. We delivered third quarter non-GAAP total company revenue of $228 million and GAAP total company revenue of $226 million. I will break down revenue shortly. Third quarter total company gross margin was 76%. Our non-GAAP gross margin includes software deferred revenue acquired but not recognized of $2 million and excludes stock compensation expense of $1 million. Operating expenses of $146 million were down 3% sequentially as we continue to maintain financial discipline by optimizing our resources, becoming more efficient, and improving our bottom line. Our non-GAAP operating expenses exclude $20 million in amortization of acquired intangibles, $14 million in stock comp expense, $1 million in restructuring charges, and a benefit of $69 million related to the fair value adjustment on the debentures.

Non-GAAP operating income was $27 million, non-GAAP net income was $28 million. Non-GAAP EPS was $0.05 in the third quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA was $44 million this quarter, excluding the non-GAAP adjustments previously mentioned. This equates to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 19%. I will now provide a breakdown of our revenue in the quarter. Total software and services revenue was $219 million, representing 96% of total revenue and up from 85% compared to a year ago. Total SAF revenue was $9 million, and total handset device revenue was zero. SAF continues to wind down as expected. I will now provide a further breakdown of our software and services revenue in the quarter. Enterprise software accounted for 45%, BlackBerry Technology Solutions accounted for 24%, and licensing IP and other accounted for 31%. Please refer to the supplemental table in the press release for the GAAP and non-GAAP details.

I am pleased to report we continue to make good progress since we implemented ASC 606 at the beginning of the fiscal year. You may recall that we reported an 18% year-over-year decline in enterprise software and services revenue in Q1. Since Q1, we have achieved sequential growth in enterprise software and services revenue so that the reported year-over-year decline has improved from 18% in Q1 to 10% in Q2 and 8% in Q3. We experienced the same progressive improvement if we were to account for the third quarter of last year under ASC 606 in the same way this fiscal year. On that basis, enterprise software and services revenue would have experienced approximately 6% growth year-over-year this quarter.

Recurring software and servicing revenue was approximately 79% in the quarter, consistent with the definition we have used before implementing ASC 606, which was to exclude perpetual licenses from this calculation because they were recognized upfront. However, with the implementation of ASC 606 in the first quarter of fiscal 2019, any perpetual licenses we enter now are recognized ratably over four years. When including these perpetual licenses, recurring revenue would have been approximately 88% this quarter. Moving on to our balance sheet and working capital performance. Total cash equivalents, and investments were $2.4 billion, which increased by $47 million from August 31st, 2018. Our net cash position was $1.8 billion at the end of the quarter. Moving to the cash flow statement, free cash flow before considering the impact of restructuring and legal proceedings was positive $39 million.

Cash generated in operations was $62 million, capital expenditures were $5 million. That concludes my comments. I'll now turn the call back to John to provide our financial outlook.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Thank you, Steve. We are reaffirming our fiscal year 2019 financial outlook, which are total company software services billing growth to be double digit, total software services revenue growth to be between 8%- 10%, non-GAAP EPS to be positive, we will deliver a positive free cash flow for the year. With that, Matthew, I would like to open this for Q&A.

Operator

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, press star one to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We request that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Our first question today will be from Paul Sweeney with Scotia Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Hey, Paul.

Paul Sweeney
Analyst, Scotia Capital Markets

Morning.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Morning.

Paul Sweeney
Analyst, Scotia Capital Markets

Steve or John, can you talk a little bit about the IP and licensing business? John, you mentioned that the base was $40 million-$50 million, but we're wondering, did that step up in the quarter to a higher level? Was there anything one-time or unusual that either moved forward from Q4 into the quarter? We had a new higher baseline? Thank you.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

I said $40 million-$45 million. You added $5 million to it. Our recurring quarterly IP is about $40 million-$45 million. It will creep up over time. Yes, there were a one-time in the quarter. I like to talk about one-time because, as I said earlier, we have a pipeline of licensing deals, and we intend to close it. Timing of the close, a lot of times, are somewhat unpredictable. We do have a good close in Q3. No, it did not come in as an expense of Q4.

Paul Sweeney
Analyst, Scotia Capital Markets

Okay. The quick-

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

I just wanted to add to John's comment about the pipeline, which is, while we can't guarantee each and every quarter will be the same, we've been pretty consistent in bringing in revenue above that $40million-$ 45million number.

Paul Sweeney
Analyst, Scotia Capital Markets

Okay. The quick follow-up, I guess, John, can you talk a little bit about the ramp-up in auto design wins, how we've seen that sort of layer on in the last couple of quarters? You gave us nice detail about new wins. What I'm thinking back to is wins that you'd won over the last sort of 18 months, how those are starting to stack into the numbers in terms of non-IVI type wins, where you're at in terms of shipping ADAS and non-IVI type applications. Happy holidays.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Right. Okay, happy holidays. The gestation period of design wins are long in QNX. Once you get it's also a very long tail and quite stable on a quarterly basis. What we're really experiencing right now, the growth comes from probably something that we have won, the design projects that we won about three years ago. As they are shipping those design embedded into the auto, we're starting to see the royalty flow. What we're winning today, we will probably won't see it for two, three years out. It will help create that base. As you could see, this is why it was so important to highlight the design wins so that you know that the pipelines are there and the revenue will be coming on a rather predictable way. That's why we highlight it.

You know that we have a big push on getting beyond IVI, the infotainment. Although IVI, just to caution everybody, is still a very, very good business. We have won some really big ones most recently. All the cars now have IVI, it's kind of a standard now. I wouldn't think IVI is that not as good as a piece of business.

Paul Sweeney
Analyst, Scotia Capital Markets

Thank you.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Yeah.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Todd Coupland with CIBC. Your line is open.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Hi, Todd.

Todd Coupland
Analyst, CIBC

Hi. Yeah, good morning.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Good morning.

Todd Coupland
Analyst, CIBC

One clarification and one question, if I could.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Okay.

Todd Coupland
Analyst, CIBC

On IP licensing, I might have missed this, so I apologize if I did.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

No.

Todd Coupland
Analyst, CIBC

There was some discussion in the press that you had signed a licensing deal with Nokia. Was that contributing this quarter in the higher revenue?

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Yes.

Todd Coupland
Analyst, CIBC

Okay. Is that finished now?

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Finished. Us and Nokia are finished for the time being. Yes. I don't understand the word finished.

Todd Coupland
Analyst, CIBC

What I mean is does it represent everything that you've signed with Nokia up until now?

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

That's it.

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

I don't want to go through the details in terms of the transaction itself, but I think in terms of future revenue, I would not see future revenue in the short term from Nokia, correct.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Unless we have new licensing agreements. Nokia and us could also work on new licensing.

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

Right.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

That's not precluded.

Todd Coupland
Analyst, CIBC

Just background for the question. I think there were some things written in the press where people were thinking it was sort of a plus $100 million opportunity, and there was a few things in the quarter that would have made up the $68 million. That was the background for the question.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Don't believe what is written out there.

Todd Coupland
Analyst, CIBC

Second question, I want to ask you about competition in device management. Is there any change in market share with what appears to have been a rise in Microsoft's position in some of the market research firms and magic quadrants that are out there in the past year? Just wondering how you're stacking up against that. We've had some investors ask this competitive question now with a little bit stronger push from Microsoft. Any color in that would be helpful.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

No doubt Microsoft is pushing very hard. It affects every player in the market. To us, a little bit different, because we're concentrated on regulated industry, and we're concentrated on federal, meaning governments, I shouldn't say federal, governments around the world, Five Eyes, G7, and so forth. We've concentrated on that, and we're concentrated on banking and finance, where security and compliance are the number one ingredient or number one requirement. We don't see as much. On the lower end, on the mid-range deal, yes, you could see Microsoft pretty aggressive in that space. We still maintain our number two position in market share, according to IDC most recent publication. Obviously, they're competition, but we expect to at least hold that position.

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

Longer term, if the acquisition of Cylance goes through, that may help us further our platform for UEM as well.

Todd Coupland
Analyst, CIBC

Okay. Thanks very much.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Gus Papageorgiou with Macquarie. Your line is open.

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

Hey, Gus.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Hi. Hi, Gus.

Gus Papageorgiou
Analyst, Macquarie

What's happening with the auto market?

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Well, since you're asking.

Gus Papageorgiou
Analyst, Macquarie

I was going to ask you.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

I was going to.

I was trying to ask you about that question.

Gus Papageorgiou
Analyst, Macquarie

I just wanted to maybe ask for a little more color on BTS. Nice growth there, up 23% year-over-year. I'm wondering if you could segment IVI growth versus growth in the other software modules and maybe what we're seeing there and as you're looking forward, should we assume IVI is flat? What kind of growth rate would you expect for the other software modules in that line of business?

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

When we talk about design wins, all these ADAS, clusters, instrumentation, hypervisors, all those wins are good wins. They are all design wins. Technically speaking, you're not really seeing the revenue in the numbers that we're reporting today, but only to the exception of maybe some development seats, and some professional services, but those are not a high number. The IVI, non-IVI growth is pretty split. As you can see that we have nine design wins, five in infotainment, four in ADAS and cluster area. We're making progress pretty much across the board.

Gus Papageorgiou
Analyst, Macquarie

If I understand correctly then, is it fair to say that your IVI is actually growing pretty well, and that we shouldn't assume that it's flat?

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

No.

Gus Papageorgiou
Analyst, Macquarie

Consequently, because you have the design wins and the seats, once these other programs go into volume, should we see a big ramp then? What kind of timing can we expect?

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Timing to be expect is usually two or three years, Sal, as you know the business quite well. Let me describe this this way. Remember a couple of quarters ago, I said three, four years ago, our platform is probably running about $20 million or so a quarter. Right now, we're running at close to $50 million a quarter. That was a result of all the design wins three, four years ago, when people keep asking me, when I told people that we have good design wins, and they say, "Well, where's the beef? Where's the revenue?" Now we're showing you the revenue of the design wins that we have in two, three years out. The next step up of that, you should start seeing probably not immediately, about a year out, maybe, you could start seeing the next plateau reached.

That's the nature of this particular business. The good thing, again, what I want to emphasize is once you started to have revenue coming, the flow is not only predictable and it's ramping slightly over the life cycle, it's a long flow. It's a long tail.

Gus Papageorgiou
Analyst, Macquarie

Great. Thank you very much.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

All right, sure.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Daniel Chan with TD Securities. Your line is open.

Daniel Chan
Analyst, TD Securities

Hi.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Hi, good morning.

Daniel Chan
Analyst, TD Securities

Hi, good morning. Good morning. I was just wondering if you had a chance to talk to some of your existing customers about Cylance and if you could provide us with any early feedback you're getting from them.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Oh, yeah. First of all, we're really not supposed to talk about this before our Hart-Scott-Rodino was cleared, which is antitrust. We haven't really talked to a lot of customers in detail on how it's going to work, but we now could start doing that in some form now. The early indication from the customers of a very high interest. They all wanted to know how it gets into mobility and how we could use the technology in the auto. We have good conversation, good discussion.

Daniel Chan
Analyst, TD Securities

That's good to hear. I just want to switch gears to the enterprise software side. Steve, you talked about how you're making improvements there and that's showing up in your year-over-year. Just wondering if you guys can give us some indication of how your customers and your direct sales team is adapting to the sale of more subscription licenses than perpetual. Is that where it needs to be now, or is there still more work to be done?

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Well, it's an ongoing process. The sales force is still adjusting to the subscription. I wanted to tell everybody that we don't really have that big a sales force issue to deal with because our compensation plans for the salespeople had no difference whether it's subscription or because we comp people on billings. There's no difference on how we take revenue. I wouldn't be concerned about that.

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

Yeah. The major difference is, as you know, is not just perpetual to subscription, but just the fact that you can't change your quarter results in the final week of a quarter. What you have to do is the rhythm has to be, day to day, week to week, as opposed to month to month. That's a change.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

That's a change, yes.

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

Right. That's a change.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

That's a change.

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

Right.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

That change is, we're still working that.

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

Yes, it is. Clearly.

Daniel Chan
Analyst, TD Securities

Okay, but if you're compensating your team on billings, is it fair to say that they're more likely to get a larger or to chase a larger multi-year deal than a one-time perpetual license?

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

No. We still like a two or three-year subscription deal. That's what we're asking every people to do.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

A perpetual license would always be higher dollar value.

Daniel Chan
Analyst, TD Securities

All right.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

You know what I'm getting at, Daniel?

Daniel Chan
Analyst, TD Securities

Yep. My thinking is after the two to three years are done from the subscription license, then they have an opportunity to renew that. That's better for the sales guy over the long term, isn't it?

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

Correct.

Daniel Chan
Analyst, TD Securities

Correct.

Better for the company, which is why we chose that path.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Absolutely. Okay, thank you.

Okay.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Steven Fox with Cross Research. Your line is open.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Hi.

Steven Fox
Analyst, Cross Research

Hi, good morning.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Good morning.

Steven Fox
Analyst, Cross Research

Couple questions on the relationship with Aptiv, which you highlighted with these five infotainment wins in Asia.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Yeah.

Steven Fox
Analyst, Cross Research

My understanding is you've had a partnership on the autonomous driving side for the better part of a year, but this is infotainment wins. I'm just curious if the two are going hand in hand, when you talk about winning business in Asia with Aptiv, is that multiple OEMs, certain types of programs? Can you just sort of expand on that as well? Thanks.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

That particular one, they're using us as their platform. It will eventually map into multiple customers. They obviously have customers in mind already, but they were in that. We do have a relationship with them on autonomous platform, but we also have a relationship with them, as you can see, on connected cars.

Steven Fox
Analyst, Cross Research

The win in Asia was for a platform that's for a single OEM, or is it multiple OEMs?

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

In this particular instance, it's one single OEM.

Steven Fox
Analyst, Cross Research

Okay, great. Just broadly speaking, when you think about working with some of the tier 1s, is there certain criteria you're looking at in terms of how it most benefits you guys? Or is there a number of tier 1s that you can find attractive no matter what? Thanks.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

We like to work with every tier 1. Every tier 1, every integrator. I don't think we have an established profile of a tier 1. Obviously, they need to have a good enough technology background and channel because we don't want them to misuse our technology. Sometimes, some tier 1 require our help to integrate the technology, and that's when our professional services work comes in.

Steven Fox
Analyst, Cross Research

Great. Thank you so much.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Sure.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Paul Treiber with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Hey, Paul.

Paul Treiber
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Hey, thanks very much, good morning.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Sure. Good morning.

Paul Treiber
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Great. My line's working today. Could you clarify, on the billings growth, I think I heard earlier that it was double-digit year-to-date, it was just an increase year-over-year. Is that right? If so, for this quarter, what led to the change?

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

To the change?

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

Well, the quarter as a total company, our billings growth was single digit. However, we still stay on track for double digit for the year for the company. We're really dealing with, I think, more or less the law of small numbers as opposed to anything significant in the market.

Paul Treiber
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Okay, it's just the quarterly ebbs and flows, and you didn't see any macro changes or anything in the quarter that would give you any reason to be concerned?

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

No. Not yet. No.

Paul Treiber
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Secondly, just in regards to the enterprise software business, couple months ago, you announced a partnership with Check Point.

Yeah.

Could you provide an update there in terms of how that's rolling out? Also, can you explain how that partnership would also fit into the BlackBerry Cylance?

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Okay. Well, that's a great question. That's a great question. At that time, we announced actually three, not at the same time, but three MTD partner, the Mobile Threat Detection partners. Check Point is one of them. The other two are Lookout and Zimperium. From what I could check in the market, Lookout and Check Point are quite active with us. Lookout, we have won a number of deals, Check Point, we have quite a bit of pipelines there. Things are looking good. As to the after Cylance integrate, Cylance, of course, we're going to port over the endpoint protection prediction technology. Hopefully that we could work with Lookout and Zimperium and Check Point on extending what they have to offer. I think we could, because it's a similar market but slightly different technology.

Paul Treiber
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Okay. I see. Just lastly on ESS, enterprise software, how do we think about the seasonality of revenue going into Q4, in light of 606?

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

Q4 was our biggest perpetual license quarter last year. You have a little bit of a change there. I would still expect a sequential. I won't tell you whether it'll be the same rate as we've done in Q1 to Q2 and Q2 to Q3, but I will still expect an uptick.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

We'll see sequential growth in revenue from Q3. We also will see the 606 damping effect also goes down as we continue to make progress. Like Steve had mentioned earlier, we went from -18% year-over-year to -10% to -8%. It should be better than that.

Paul Treiber
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Just so I fully understand, even with 606, there's still some license revenue that you would take on an upfront basis?

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

Yes. How it works is as follows. As long as we have delivered all of the services at the time, we can take the revenue. Let me give you an example. You could have a situation where a singular product is being sold, as opposed to the suite. Obviously, in that space, we have a product at Secusmart, which is a different functionality than our normal UEM. We do have some components that will have the immediacy of revenue.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

That's not high.

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

It isn't, no.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

That's not high.

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

You can tell it's not high because when we factor in the recurring revenue at the high 80% rate.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Right.

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

It's small numbers.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Yeah. It also a small number. It is true, like Steve said, that those condition does exist, It's not our high. It's not high numbers.

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

Okay.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Go ahead, Matthew.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Trip Chowdhry with Global Equities Research. Your line is open.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Hey. Hey, Trip.

Trip Chowdhry
Analyst, Global Equities Research

Thank you. Very exciting numbers here.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Thank you.

Trip Chowdhry
Analyst, Global Equities Research

John, two questions on Cylance. We were at Amazon AWS conference. I can tell you the acquisition you have made is fundamentally a game changer for the whole industry. I was wondering, currently, based on your comments, you seem to be focused on making sure Cylance integrates and works well with your existing products. The impression I got from talking to various people at the AWS conference was, Cylance by itself has a multi-billion-dollar opportunity in competitive replacements of old generation security products in the industry. The company you acquired literally is a game changer because the machine learning algorithms precision is above 80%, probably the highest in the industry. I was wondering, do you think it will make sense to just keep Cylance segmental revenue separate so that we can monitor the impact Cylance is having on the BlackBerry?

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Very good, Trip. Great question. First of all, I think you know me for a very long time. I'm trying to be a little bit more conservative without having seen an entire integration plan. No doubt, Cylance itself is a high-growth entity in their own business. No doubt that they are the standout on the EPP protection using AI technology, and they are highly competitive against replacing the old signature-based technology, which are Symantec and McAfee. Those are very exciting opportunities. I'm still pursuing those opportunities, obviously. What I wanted to explain to the shareholder is not something that we added to the number of things we're already doing. It's complementary to what we're doing. In addition to the opportunity they could explore in the whole cybersecurity world, which is obviously multi-billion dollar marketplace. I have not decided on the organization going forward.

We will keep them as a separate business unit, for sure. That has been decided. Once we decided what the organization going forward, we will then adjust the reporting of that. I could hear your point, and we'll most likely, can guarantee you, most likely we'll keep Cylance reporting as a separate line.

Trip Chowdhry
Analyst, Global Equities Research

Beautiful. Congratulations on exceptional execution.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Thank you.

Trip Chowdhry
Analyst, Global Equities Research

Happy holidays.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Happy holidays to you.

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

Happy holidays, Trip.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Okay.

Operator

No further questions. No.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

Okay, good. Thank you.

Operator

Call back over, John.

John Chen
Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry

All right. Thank you, Matthew. Okay. Thank you very much for everybody's time today. I'd like to wish you all a very happy holiday season. We look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas for the CES in early January. I also want to remind everybody, don't forget to put on your calendar to come talk to us on our Analyst Day in April at San Ramon, California, where the weather is a lot better than Toronto. Thank you all very much and have a great holiday. Bye.

Steve Capelli
CFO and COO, BlackBerry

Thank you.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.