RIM Plunges on Deep Loss, BlackBerry 10 Delay (Update 1)

Updated from 5:03 p.m. EST to provide comments from the conference call in the sixth and eighth paragraphs.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Research In Motion (RIMM) were plunging in late trades on Thursday after the Canadian smartphone maker once again managed to disappoint Wall Street.

After the closing bell, the company reported a much wider than anticipated loss for its fiscal first quarter, pushed back the launch of the BlackBerry 10 until the first calendar quarter of 2013 and announced plans to lay off 5,000 employees, roughly 30% of its workforce.

For the three months ended June 2, Research In Motion reported an adjusted loss of $192 million, or 37 cents a share, on revenue of $2.81 billion, down 43% from revenue of $4.91 billion in the year-ago equivalent period.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the beleaguered electronics company to report a loss of 4 cents per share on $3.07 billion in revenue.

"I am not satisfied with these results and continue to work aggressively with all areas of the organization and the Board to implement meaningful changes to address the challenges, including a thoughtful realignment of resources and honing focus within the Company on areas that have the greatest opportunities," said CEO Thorsten Heins in a statement.

Heins also announced that BlackBerry 10 would be pushed back to the first quarter of calendar year 2013 to make sure it is successful. "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," he said.

Despite the delay and concerns about competitiveness, Heins said he's confident the BlackBerry 10 will be successful. "When we designed BlackBerry 10, we didn't just design a product, we designed a platform - very high-end specs. I am very confident that this product will deliver on its performance," the CEO noted on the conference call.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company shipped 7.8 million BlackBerry smartphones during the quarter and approximately 260,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.

As part of the company's ongoing CORE (Cost Optimization and Resource Efficiency) restructuring program, RIM announced it would be cutting approximately 5,000 employees, expected to be completed by the end of fiscal 2013. This will cost the company approximately $350 million. That will bring the company down to around 11,500 employees, Heins noted on the conference call.

Shares of Research In Motion closed Thursday's regular session at $9.13, down 0.54%. The stock was last quoted at $7.77, off 14.9%, on volume of more than 7 million, according to Nasdaq.com.

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--Written by Chris Ciaccia in New York

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