BlackBerry profit tops estimates on lower costs

FILE PHOTO - A Blackberry smartphone is displayed in this illustrative picture taken in Bordeaux, Southwestern France, August 22, 2016. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo - RTX2VWC6

BlackBerry Ltd reported quarterly profit above Wall Street's estimates on Friday, as lower expenses helped offset a drop in its enterprise software and services revenue.

US-listed shares of the company were up 2.7 percent premarket.

BlackBerry, which dominated the smartphone market nearly a decade ago before losing out to Apple Inc's iPhones and Android devices, has been trying to win investor confidence and make money by selling software to manage mobile devices to corporations and government agencies.

The company's expenses fell in the quarter. Selling and marketing costs dropped about 6 percent to $106 million, while research and development costs fell 15 percent.

Enterprise software and services revenue, the company's biggest, fell 3 percent to $88 million in the second quarter ended August 31.

On a per share basis, the company reported a loss of 4 cents, compared with a loss of 8 cents per share in the year-ago quarter.

Excluding items, the company earned 4 cents per share, beating analysts' average estimate of 1 cent, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Total revenue fell 13 percent to $210 million.