Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining the call today. As always, we really appreciate you taking the time. To get today's event underway, let me hand over to BlackBerry's Executive Chair and Chief Executive Officer, John Chen.
Thank you, Tim, and I also add my welcome to everybody who take the time to join us and, this is the first time we actually do a investor call for retail investors. I hope we're gonna be able to do this many times in the future. Today, two of my colleagues, the two presidents of the two business units, is gonna go into, you know, the details of their respective businesses and how they think about the business going forward, the growth, the strategy, and so forth. I believe it'll be very interesting to many of you.
Other than just adding my welcome here and kick this off, one of the most important things that I'd like you all to think about while you're listening to my colleagues and going through the materials, that we really have a bigger strategy that's beyond the two operating unit. The two operating unit was designed to add focus to two very high growth market. One is the embedded IoT market, as well as a Cybersecurity market. Again, we'll go through those materials. The more important thing is we strongly, here at BlackBerry, believe that we're gonna make a big difference in the world. Just like many years ago, we made a cell phone that changes how people work, where people work.
We're gonna make a big difference in the world by seeing the convergence of these two markets. The convergence are necessary because it created a very trusted platform where everything was going to be based on. What is everything? The society in general, the smart city, the smart home, the smart offices, you know, your vehicle, all the transportations and the interaction of those. We have much bigger view of how it enable a much better life going forward, the kind of the next generation. Sometimes I think about this as, you know, watching some science fiction movie, where all these cars are flying around and then the interaction, you know, landing at a building, you know, the top of the building and so forth.
All those needs a very coordinated data sharing, action sharing and a very custom environment. With that, I'd like to pass it back on to Tim to moderate the panel. I thank you again for joining us and looking forward to have future interaction. Thank you.
Thank you, John. In the room with me today, where I have the President of our Cybersecurity Business Unit, John Giamatteo. Hi, John.
Hey, Tim.
On the line joining us from Chicago, I have the President of our IoT Business Unit, Mattias Eriksson. Hi, Mattias.
Hi, Tim.
We're trying to do something different today. The feedback I've been getting is that the traditional investor conferences or fireside chats, if you prefer, tend to be more focused on institutional investors and less on retail. Today, we wanna give you, our retail base, a forum to ask the questions that you'd like to see answered. Now, I get lots of questions, and thank you for all of them. Reg FD, the fair disclosure rules, means that I can't answer a lot of those questions just on a one-on-one basis, because otherwise you'd have some information that no one else has. By doing this live today, we get around all of that. Now, I wanna say thank you for the hundreds, I mean, literally hundreds of questions we've had in advance of today's session. Thank you for all of them.
Now, obviously, we won't have time to answer all of them in the time we've got, but we will focus on those that have come up most often. Don't worry, if you haven't submitted a question in advance, you still have an opportunity to do so, 'cause we want to take some live questions today as well. There's a Q&A box on your screen. Hopefully, you can see that. Please submit your questions in there, and we'll try our best to get to as many as we can. A replay will be available on the BlackBerry Investor Relations website. Let us know what you think of how today went. If you think it's helpful and whether or not we should do another one in the future. Okay, that's enough of that. Lots to get through. Let's get going. Okay. Comes from Kathy Hyland. Thank you, Kathy.
The question is: Is the Facebook lawsuit 100% settled? It's a question I get back in fiscal year 2021. Now, we didn't give details at the time for two reasons. One, contractually, we couldn't, and secondly, it wasn't material enough for us to issue an 8-K either. Hopefully that settles that question. The next question comes from Fabian Markel. Thank you, Fabian. This is actually for both Mattias and John. I'll start with you, Mattias, and then John, if you wouldn't mind chiming in. Pandemic, supply constraints, war in Ukraine. Mattias.
Thank you. That's a great question. The short answer is, of course, that other customers and partners are affected. Obviously, BlackBerry is affected. We currently don't believe that it's going to be as bad as it's been the last couple of years.
Let me give you a little bit of context and maybe frame the answer a little bit. Obviously this is related to our commercial structure. You remember how the IoT business makes most of its money through the software development platform. A significant portion of the revenue comes from royalty discrepancies mainly linked to vehicle sales. If you look back a couple of years, some of you might remember that, you know, 2019 was a year with quite a few cars being sold, in 2020. You know, car sales got very materially down to $74 million-$75 million or so. We actually thought that it would normalize more or less. A lot of our customers and partners were caught out last year, and so were we.
I think the estimates, depending on definition, comes in around $76 million- $77 million for last year. People believe that there will still be issues. There will be growth above last year, but we will still not reach the $90 million we had in 2019. It's a little bit difficult because they launch vehicles with certain features, so it's really down to looking at each of the car makers independently.
I think the good news from our perspective is that, you know, first of all, the demand is, so the OEMs and our customers are trying very hard to solve this issue. They are making progress, but it's a difficult problem to solve. From our business perspective, when we look at our business long term, as this gridlock sort of gets resolved, we believe we will benefit greatly from a little bit of a pent-up demand. The short answer is, are we affected? Yes. That is included in the current forecast.
Same question.
That's great. Thanks for the question, Fabian. On the cyber side of the business, generally year after year, we continually see growth in the number of cyber threats that are hitting the market from all different angles. Events like SolarWinds, events like the Colonial Pipeline, they happen with increasing regularity. Obviously things like the Ukraine War only further exacerbate that threat level. When you see the threat level as high as it is through those types of events, you know, quite rightly, you see companies wanting to bolster their defenses and their technology and their protection of their assets and their information. Our Cylance products have shown time and again to offer the best possible defense against malware and ransomware as these threats increasingly hit us from all different angles. As we think about the Cyber business and looking forward, we see a strong and growing market for our Cyber products in the future.
Excellent. Okay, I'm gonna stay with you, John, if I may.
Sure.
We've got a question from Wayne Vandermeer. Thank you, Wayne. The question is: With an increasingly hostile Cyber environment and BlackBerry having the gold standard of certifications, BlackBerry offers a flattish outlook. Why?
Really good question, Wayne. You know, honestly, there's a couple of different dynamics happening at play here. We're seeing growth in our security products, really good demand along some of the trends that I just talked about. We're seeing some headwinds on the management side of our portfolio. Some of you know the UEM technology has been around for many years, and the endpoint access to those mobiles, those laptops, other devices for years to come. However, you know, the mature market, when some of the things that we're fighting, we're seeing that with BlackBerry UEM, especially at the lower end of the market. You know, the key selling point, secure connectivity capability.
Nobody offers that same level of security as we do, and it's backed up by many, many certifications. We're seeing some churn, and that happens in that lower end of the market, where we see competing UEMs that tend to be bundled with other products segment of the market. Those are some of the dynamics that are happening. That secure connectivity capability, it's what we stand for. It's what our large majority of our UEM customer base is big customers like governments, like financial services companies, that place a very high importance on security. Really good renewal rates with them. We're also looking at a number of ways to improve our retention at the lower end as well, by bundling BlackBerry UEM with other products that'll resonate with those customers.
you know, going in the other direction, we're seeing promising signs from our security products. Security, the demand is up. I think we're focusing on the right market with the right products, with the right people in place. I think we've done a lot of good work on product releases and enhancements, and we're seeing some really good signs. Things like our CylanceGUARD Managed Services, for instance, is doing particularly well as we've taken that to market, we've seen some good uptake in that particular area. There's more to do for sure as we continue to deliver products and solutions that address that market. On balance, coming back to your question around, you know, why we're not seeing kind of a surge in all boats rising with the tide.
When you combine the headwinds of the UEM in that lower segment of the marketplace, you combine that with the momentum that we're seeing on the security side. This year, it's largely canceling it out. Obviously, John, the team will be giving you updates on a quarterly basis on how we're. That's what I'm excited about as we think about the long-term prospects of the Cybersecurity business unit.
Wonderful. Thank you, John. Okay, Matthias, I'm gonna switch over. Market to be worth over $87 billion by 2030. What are BlackBerry's plans to secure market share?
This is an interesting topic. The short answer is, if you think about the requirements for autonomous driving, they actually play directly into the strengths of BlackBerry. Let me maybe expand a little bit because there's a lot to unpack in autonomous driving. If you simplistically think about what is needed for autonomous driving from foundational software, which is, you know, built on high performing chipsets. You need performance from that software stack, and performance is obviously a key value proposition differentiator for QNX. The second thing you probably need. What QNX offers a value proposition differentiator. Last but not least, you know, if you have an autonomous driving car, the last thing you want is a blue screen of death showing up. You want it to be reliable.
Position that we have and the value proposition that we are investing in. If you then look at the journey towards fully autonomous driving, and I have had the great fortune or luck to be part of a highly autonomous driving developments for many years, now, and unfortunately, it sort of pushes out. It's not just about technology, it's about the regulatory environment and so forth. Simply, you know, lane departure warnings, automatic cruise control, automatic braking, the stuff that you might or might not have in your car, since a couple of years back. Many OEMs are trying to sort of just. If you take that path, the default provider of the foundational software is QNX. You probably...
If you've been following us for a while, you know about our close relationship with NVIDIA. You know about the design wins that we have announced over the last few years. We are the dominant player in that ADAS stack, and that is what is shipping now and for multiple years. We're very well-positioned in that sort of incremental approach. The other approach, which is throw away everything and start from scratch, and that's typically where the startups went five years ago when they started building a completely integrated stack from scratch, not taking into account current features and so forth. We have a number of wins in that area, a number of technology startups that are bet on us and are testing and so forth.
The reality is that is not a business today, and when it will become a business depends on many things beyond just the technology stack. I don't know who is gonna win in that space. What I can say is that we sit in many of these foundational stacks, and it's gonna be a fairly extended journey before we have large scale, fully autonomous level three, level four, level five, vehicles on the road that materially affects sort of the revenue of this business. The short answer, again, is we are very well-positioned for autonomous driving, and it plays into our strengths.
Fantastic. Very exciting. Thank you, Matthias. Okay, next question. Matt Brannigan. Thank you, Matt. BNN Bloomberg reviewed BlackBerry's Q4 earnings recently. The review did not shine a positive light on the company. Rather, during the review, the station cut to a video showing the past CEO introducing a new phone. Is this how you want the company to be highlighted on Canada's top investment show? Well, I'll take this one. The answer is absolutely not. It's certainly surprising, Matt, and frankly, quite disappointing that that would be the case. John Chen has given a number of interviews to BNN Bloomberg, and therefore it's disappointing to hear that that was the path they took.
You know, the BlackBerry brand is iconic, and there are still some out there that haven't fully heard about what we're doing now, and I mean, if we look around, we're in the most exciting. Well, certainly some of the most exciting markets. You know, Matthias there talking about the software-defined vehicle, all the exciting stuff going on there, John talking about Cybersecurity. These are exciting markets. When investors do hear that message, they tend to want to know more. We're out there trying to repeat that message at investor conferences, trying to make it clear exactly what we do, and trying to encourage investors to take a look. In answer, absolutely not, and we're disappointed to hear that. Okay, I'm gonna go back to you next, Matthias. A question from Michael Scott. Thank you, Michael.
Michael would like to understand the expected revenue model for Ivy. It seems like this will be a recurring subscription type of revenue from the software being in a vehicle by itself with revenue splits for the auto manufacturers. Will there be additional revenue splits with developers and the additional pricing of their individual apps for Ivy?
It's another good question. Thanks for the question. The short answer is potentially yes. You know, we are making a lot of progress with Ivy. I know not just from this group, but from every other investor call that I have, the top of mind for everybody is, "Please explain to us exactly how the business model is gonna work and how much money you're gonna make next year and the year after." You know, Ivy is a dynamic edge cloud software platform, and from that you can sort of derive that there will be platform business models associated with it. The reality is that we are, at this stage, still running POCs, pilots with customers. We are negotiating with these customers, the exact commercial model.
If you dig deep into the evolution of how the OEM is doing business, you know that many of the OEMs have very different maturity and very different plans for how they're gonna play out their business models. The guiding light for us at this point is we will be flexible on the business model depending on the customers and partners that are part of the deal. We have said there will be a recurring revenue business model, whether that is usage-based or some revenue share model or time-based, that remains to be seen depending on where the customer wants to go. What I will not do is sort of publicly negotiate with people around what that business model might or might not be.
That would be a bad idea for us, that would be a bad idea for our investors. Believe me, we are as excited as you are. As soon as we have closed the first, probably several deals, we will come back and explain more how this is actually playing out. I think you can take comfort in we have good feedback on the approach. The OEMs, given their different strategies and where they're at maturity-wise, they appreciate us being flexible to accommodate their plans and their strategy for the evolving business models for the car. It will be a recurring business model. There are many options within sort of platform type of business models. As soon as we have closed a few deals, we'll come back and tell you more about it.
Wonderful. Okay, John, one for you now. It comes from Dave Harris. Thank you, Dave. The question is: There's been a lot of interest for Cylance Antivirus on a retail level. Yet, it's been taken off the store shelves, so to speak, at a moment in time where Cybersecurity is paramount. Will it become available as an upgraded program on a retail level in the near future?
On this one, as some of you know, Cylance, when we acquired Cylance, they did have a consumer product at the time of acquisition called Smart AV. But honestly, in the spirit of being, you know, being balanced, needing to attack and move for growth, we decided to move away from the consumer segment of the space. There's many possible markets for the Cylance's customers rather than with consumers. In particular, we're seeing a lot of interest from our small and medium-sized business customers, the government. Delving into a large segment of the consumer space is not something that's really on the radar screen for us. We're really doing it just in the spirit of there's. You got to focus on where you're good, where we think we've got the biggest impact, and that's our intention right now.
Very good. Thank you, John. Okay, I'm gonna take
Yes. That got a lot of attention and press, obviously, when it was announced. You know, we are quite pleased. Wind River VxWorks, which is an area we have not prioritized as strong in telecoms, it's not a prioritized segment for us. We actually don't run into them that much anymore for our core segments. There were a couple throughout the map using the acquisition to diversify and so forth, and that might very well be the case. I think the reality for people really wanting to provide foundational software, the key value propositions is this notion that we are neutral and independent. By locking up, you know, the foundational software with a tier one that obviously have many other things, both in the hardware, use Wind River anymore. I wish them luck. I think it's a very interesting acquisition. It's not something that we are worried about.
If considered best for shareholders. I have to say, we've had feedback from a lot of shareholders who actually don't want us to do that. Invest the capital in those very exciting markets. Right now, our focus is on go-to-market and revenue growth. One for you. Many partnerships, but no revenue stream reflected. How do you monitor? Is there a yearly audit?
I'll start by telling you know, partnerships are really important to anyone in the Cybersecurity space, and they come in all different shapes and sizes, whether it's our good resellers, MSPs, systems integrators. I mean, heck, we're even doing business with Amazon in the marketplace that's transacting with them as a partner. There's a lot of different, you know, partners that we work with to take our products and services to market. It's an important part of our overall go-to-market that tell us, you know, some of these big telco companies, they are really looking for new services, value-added services that can help differentiate what they bring on those relationships as well. A lot of different partnerships in terms of how we go to market.
There's another set of partnerships which I would call them more technology-oriented partners, every single solution, you know, available to us, for some of our Cybersecurity customers. Having partnerships, you know, great examples, companies like Exabeam in the SIEM space, you know, Okta in the, you know, the, two-factor, identification and, space. These are the types of technology direction. We've got our traditional partners, our product partners. You know, they'll choose us for a variety of different reasons. Obviously, you know, some of these technologies are better value proposition, but the underlying value proposition around our AI engine, our protection against malware and ransomware are secure complements around that. Hopefully that gives you a little bit more color about the different types of partners that we work with.
Wonderful. Okay, I'm gonna come back to you, Matthias. One from Leon is. Do you recognize Wejo as a worthy competitor for Ivy? I'm gonna broaden that out a little and say, what competition do you see out there for Ivy at this
It's a really big topic, and I think the reality is, if you take a step back and you think about the evolution of the software-defined car, and where cars is gonna be over the next three, five years trying to figure out how to do this, the reality is that the solution that people really need doesn't exist on the market. It's an interesting ecosystem. We utilize the leading strengths of AWS in terms of the cloud and the developer ecosystem and so forth, and our leading strength and capabilities at the edge. They operate just because of this dynamic. There are many of these stakeholders that potentially compete for certain aspects of the overall proposition, but could also be a great partner.
In general, what I think the ecosystem of the OEM is evolving the software stack, even though they might have an internal solution for certain portions of the data today, they might not necessarily have a solution that works great. Caveat it with, we are at early stages with Ivy. We are running our first pilot sign. I can't wait to see the outcome for it, and from it. As that outcome materializes, it will be a very interesting discussion with the OEMs.
Question coming in from Thomas Ingham. Thank you, Tom. What is behind the Cylance rebranding?
You know, quickly wouldn't call it a rebranding, but rather more leveraging the product names that the market is familiar with. One of the things I think we're blessed with as a company is we've got some great brands. BlackBerry is one of the most respected brands in the industry. I will tell you know, from product perspective, the Cylance brand is very effective. It's something that the Cybersecurity space in particular has recognized as really a trailblazer from an innovation perspective. What we've really decided to do, obviously BlackBerry is gonna continue to be our company brand, but as we talk about the Cylance as much as possible because the market really resonates with that from a Cybersecurity perspective, you know, I would say we're, you know, from a product perspective. We bring to the marketplace as well. Hopefully that answers your question, Tom.
Wonderful. Thank you, John. Okay. Next question, Dale Stefanisco. Looking in both of the markets, the auto space, Cyber space, you really don't have to look very far to find companies with very strong valuations. However, it is fair to take a different view on the value of BlackBerry. Thank you for that question, Dale. Okay. I've just seen a question. I think it's a great question from Arif. I know who wants to go first. Maybe Matthias, do you wanna go first?
Yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah, so, I think it ties back to what you started articulating in the last question. I think I've talked about this a couple of times before. What excites me about BlackBerry, and it doesn't matter if you're looking at the next few years or the next five years, this business that I'm part of is a long lifecycle segments that have very attractive economics that we are going after. The segments are growing, they are profitable, that is a good starting point for capabilities and IP, and track record to serve the evolving needs within those segments.
I joked when I came in and took over the team that I was very happy to see that we actually had more execution and commercial issues than we had engineering issues. There's a very strong engineering capability and IP foundation. If you don't have that, at least if I look at the slightly longer time horizon, there are a number of big trends that are actually pushing the industry in our direction, and they exist at multiple layers. That is in certain segments and certain part of the overall industry happening exponentially. When I say smarter, I mean more compute, more memory, more connectivity, more IP. When they turn software-defined, you get a sophisticated software stack that is layered, difficult to manage, you need critical capabilities at different layers.
We provide that foundational software stack. The trends for, you know, sort of our overall industry segments of which we serve small segments are pulling everybody in the direction. Before I get carried away here, but, last but not least, we have the best customers and partners in the industry. If you make a list of all the various customers, doesn't matter if you're talking about chipset makers or if you're talking about technology partners or tier ones or OEMs, they're all there. Everybody you wanna work with, they're all there, and they are happy with us. They like two reasons. We're a little bit disjointed over the last several years, but they are starting to come together, and that is not a single quarter journey or even a one-year journey, it's a multi-year journey. I can tell you we have a kickoff, but the team is excited. We are excited about the future.
Wonderful. It's great to hear that excitement too. John, same question to you.
That's great, Mattias. Great stuff. Company. Why I actually joined the company six months ago, seven months ago, I firmly believe we're in the right market. We've got the right brand. We're in the right market with the right set of products that we're continuing to build out and continuing to invest in. You know, we're in growing relevant markets, whether that's the software-defined vehicle and what Mattias's team is driving towards or whether that's the Cybersecurity space and all the opportunities that represents us.
When you think about a large relevant market, we've got a great brand, we've got great technology, and the final thing that really the great people. You know, we're attracting some of the best and brightest people in the industry. When I reach out to my network and talk technology and the right people driving execution across the entire company, that's why I'm excited to be part of the BlackBerry team and the future ahead.
Wonderful. With the company, do let us know if you think this will be a useful thing for us to do again in the future. I'm gonna say thank you, and have a good day.
Take care, everyone.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.