More bleeding at BlackBerry

The University of Waterloo says it has bought five buildings and land from BlackBerry for $41 million. The University will take over three of the buildings as soon as the deal closes on February 14th while the remaining buildings will be leased to the smartphone maker for up to five years. The deal adds 300,000 square feet and more than 1,000 parking spaces to the University’s holdings.

After a rough second quarter for BlackBerry, things were even worse for the smartphone maker in it’s third quarter. The Waterloo-based company is reporting a staggering 4.4-billion dollar loss, although we should note that most of that is from write-downs and restructuring. The actual operation loss from operations was $354 million, or 67 cents a share. But that’s 23 cents below what analysts were expecting. BlackBerry says it’s already begun re-focusing on services and software, while establishing a more efficient business model for its devices. And on the markets, BlackBerry shares actually jumped by 16% Friday; the rally partly fuelled by a five-year manufacturing partnership with Chinese manufacturer Foxconn.

DeGroote School of Business professor Marvin Ryder says despite the latest loss, the company’s stock actually rose after the announcement. Ryder attributes that to BlackBerry’s decision to get out of manufacturing.