RIM’s Q4 Financial Results Rock the Kasbah

After a glum second quarter, and a ho-hum third quarter, RIM is back on the ass-kick train, boasting significant gains in the fourth quarter, which ended February 28th.

Revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 was $3.46 billion, up 24.5% from $2.78 billion in the previous quarter and up 84% from $1.88 billion in the same quarter of last year. The revenue breakdown for the quarter was approximately 83% for devices, 12% for service, 2% for software and 3% for other revenue. Revenue for the fiscal year ended February 28, 2009 was $11.07 billion, up 84% from $6.01 billion last year. RIM shipped approximately 7.8 million devices in the fourth quarter and approximately 26 million devices during fiscal 2009.

An extra 3.9 million BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) users puts the grand total of subscribers at 25 million, and total devices over 50 million. As for the year overall, the BlackBerry-maker has a net income of $1.89 billion, while they’re looking at making $3.3 – $3.5 billion in the near future of Q1 ‘09. How are investors reacting? Well, shares jumped 20% in after hours trading as a result of the call, and the RIMM stock currently sits at $63.00. Here are but a few analyst opinions on the results…

“We maintain our buy rating as the company continues to outperform all our benchmark parameters, in particular operating cash generation.” – Zacks Investment

“We believe RIM’s current replacement rate of 69 per cent for full-year 2009 – implying users replace their BlackBerrys every 1.5 years – is unsustainably high in the current environment.” – JP Morgan Chase

“With only 1.9% global handset share (98% remaining), a large opportunity remains ahead; this quarter’s results and outlook in our view affirms RIM’s solid fundamentals and competitive advantages as a dominant Smartphone platform — including high data efficiency and global carrier leverage — which we expect will boost RIM’s global share gains vs. incumbent handset vendors.” – RBC Capital Markets

“They issued a strong report. The guidance is well above expectations.” – Avian Securities

I wonder what could account for the sudden jump? Verizon (NYSE: VZ) has been happy with Storm sales, so that doubtlessly helped, and as soon as the 8900 comes to AT&T (NYSE: T), we can expect an even bigger jump. If you want to take a listen in on the investor call yourself, RIM has kindly had it archived for your pleasure.

[via RIM]