3 execs say buh-bye to BlackBerry, stock drops 4 percent

It seems three BlackBerry executives walked the plank off a sinking ship this week.

The mobile company, which is struggling to keep its relevancy after disappointing quarterly earnings and a disappointing product release, stated that it is currently in the middle of restructuring. It would not confirm, however, whether these three were let go as part of that restructuring or if they left on their own.

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The employees are Doug Kozak, the vice president of corporate information technology operations; Carmine Arabia, the senior vice president of global manufacturing and supply chain; and Graeme Whittington, the vice president of service operations.

A spokesperson for BlackBerry told VentureBeat in an email:

We can confirm that Doug Kozak, Carmine Arabia and Graeme Wittington are leaving, or have already left, BlackBerry. We thank all of them for their contributions and wish them well.

As previously stated, we are in the second phase of our transformation plan where we will be assessing our organization – from top to bottom – to ensure we have the right people in the right roles with the right skill sets to drive new opportunities in mobile computing. We will be as transparent as possible as plans evolve.

The company’s stock is down around 4 percent in after hours trading at the time of this post, meaning investors aren’t really comforted by the restructuring effort. On July 10, the company fired its U.S. sales chief, and promised more layoffs, which it followed through with two weeks later, letting go of 250 of its research and development employees. This came a day after David J. Smith, who ran BlackBerry’s Playbook tablet operations, quit.

In the middle of all the firing, BlackBerry also cut its BlackBerry Z10 smartphone pricing from $199 to $99 at select carriers and $49 on Amazon.

The company brought in $3.1 billion in revenue last quarter, a nine percent increase year over year, but still suffered a net loss of $84 million. It shipped 2.7 million Z10 units.

hat tip CBC news