Getty Images BlackBerry Chief Executive Officer Thorsten Heins displayed one of the new Blackberry 10 smartphones without a physical keyboard at the BlackBerry 10 launch event by Research in Motion at Pier 36 in Manhattan on January 30, 2013 in New York City.
TORONTO—Research In Motion Ltd. reported a surprise loss for its fiscal first quarter and didn't break down shipments of its new line of smartphones, or the size of its overall subscriber base for the period, sending shares sharply lower early Friday.
In premarket trading, RIM shares were down 16% in New York.
RIM blamed its loss on a charge related to Venezuelan foreign-currency restrictions. Without the charge, the company said it would have approached break-even in the quarter. Analysts, armed with a wide range of estimates for the number of new BlackBerry 10 phone the company had shipped, were expecting RIM to earn a profit in the latest quarter.
The period was the first full quarter to include sales from the first of three new BlackBerry 10 smartphones, but in a surprise move the company didn't break out those sales from older models.
"The smartphone market remains highly competitive, making it difficult to estimate units, revenue and levels of profitability," the company said.
RIM shipped 6.8 million smartphones overall in the latest quarter, up 13% from the previous quarter.
It also didn't give a figure for its BlackBerry subscriber base. In the previous quarter, that total was 76 million. After years of steady, world-wide growth, RIM's subscriber base declined for the first time last December as consumers shifted away from BlackBerrys to phones from competitors such as Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.
RIM reported a loss of $84 million, or 16 cents a share, which was less than the loss of $518 million, or 99 cents a share, that it recorded in the year-earlier first quarter.
On an adjusted basis, it said it lost 13 cents a share, which was well below the profit of 6 cents a share that analysts were expecting, according to a Thomson Reuters poll.
The company said revenue rose 9% from a year earlier, to $3.1 billion. That was also below expectations. Analysts were expecting revenue of $3.36 billion.
Though the company has stopped providing guidance, it said Friday that it was also expecting an operating loss next quarter.
One bright spot was RIM's cash position at the end of the quarter of $3.1 billion, up from $2.9 billion in the previous quarter. Analysts and investors have long worried that a decline in RIM's cash position would signal that the company wouldn't have enough muscle to support its new line of phones.
RIM Chief Executive Thorsten Heins promised to increase investment supporting the roll out of the new phones and new service offerings over the next three quarters.
"We are in the early stages of this (BB10) launch," Mr. Heins said.
Analysts were eager to get an early sense of how sales of the all-touchscreen Z10, launched in February, were faring. They were also looking for any indicators of how the keyboard-equipped Q10, launched in some markets in May and in the U.S. earlier this month, was doing.
