BlackBerry stock price surges causing Twitter users to remember their love for its phones

·Executive Editor

Updated Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 10:28 AM3 min read

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Maybe BlackBerry should get back into the phone business.

BlackBerry is the latest stock with a large short position to be tossed into the speculative buying mania, enveloping some of the riskiest areas of the stock market. Shares rose 30% by early afternoon trading on Monday, despite no fresh positive news. BlackBerry told the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada Monday it was not aware of any new material information that would send the stock price higher, according to Reuters.

BlackBerry’s ticker symbol “BB” was the second most trafficked ticker page on Yahoo Finance Monday behind GameStop (which is leading the speculative bubble).

The gas for BlackBerry’s sizzling rise looks to be it selling 90 patents to Huawei, but that happened several weeks ago. But hey, in a buying mania like the one right now — buyers are gonna buy.

Unlike other very risky stocks exploding right now (see GameStop and Express), BlackBerry arguably has the best underlying fundamentals. Under long-time CEO John Chen, BlackBerry has pivoted somewhat successfully to supplying infotainment technology to automakers and cybersecurity solutions. The company exited the smartphone market in late 2016 amid years of losing market share to Apple and Google.

For the nine months ended Nov. 30, BlackBerry generated adjusted sales of $704 million and net profits of $85 million powered by its initiatives in auto tech and cybersecurity.

Despite the business model pivot, many people still think of BlackBerry as a phone maker. The stock price’s surge sent Twitter users out in force to share mostly fond memories of using their BlackBerry devices, which were known as Crackberries for their very addictive email and messaging interfaces.

Here are some noteworthy tweets (BlackBerry was a trending topic on Twitter for most of Monday):

For some reason BlackBerry is trending, and it's making me miss the days when smartphones were just tools that didn't consume our souls. pic.twitter.com/1WbbRSOvfN
— Adam Hunter (@adamhunteratc) January 25, 2021

Since Blackberry is trending... I miss my Storm! Bring it back @BlackBerry pic.twitter.com/UZC7FnbZXt
— Nina Simone's Black Pride (@frk4shoes) January 25, 2021

Since @BlackBerry is trending this is my all time favorite phone ever... blackberry bold 9000 #BlackBerry pic.twitter.com/vBKz8GDkco
— Lance Mann (@lancemann) January 25, 2021

spent way too much time playing brick breaker on my blackberry under the desk in high school 🙇?♀? pic.twitter.com/ctbhn4DtDm
— 𝖐𝖆𝖞𝖑𝖆 | dangerkart (@kayshefar) January 25, 2021

#BlackBerry is trending so here's a pic of my first BlackBerry and first smartphone I ever had. Curve 9350 pic.twitter.com/0PKiF3AQuy
— Ruri {The Watermelon Cat} (@nihil242) January 25, 2021

Since Blackberry is trending—this was my all time favorite phone! I had a personal and a work one and you couldn’t tell me nothing. I kept mine long past when they went out of style and tried to get my job to allow me to keep it when they were switching us to the iPhone. pic.twitter.com/zaNwjr3pRm
— Melissa McDowell, PhD (@the40edit) January 25, 2021

Since Blackberry is trending. I loved my Blackberry Curve 10 years ago. I thought it was such a cool phone in its day. pic.twitter.com/eqjshRXmHc
— Balou (@i_Balou) January 25, 2021

Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.

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