RIM halts trading on awful financials, hires banks for ‘strategic review’

BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion temporarily halted stock trading 15 minutes after the market closed today, and issued a “business update” where it admitted it will “likely have an operating loss” for its fiscal first quarter.

“RIM is going through a significant transformation as we move towards the BlackBerry 10 launch, and our financial performance will continue to be challenging for the next few quarters,” relatively new RIM CEO Thorsten Heins said in the update. “The on-going competitive environment is impacting our business in the form of lower volumes and highly competitive pricing dynamics in the marketplace, and we expect our Q1 results to reflect this, and likely result in an operating loss for the quarter.”

On top of halting trading and providing an update, the company said it has hired the Royal Bank of Canada and J.P. Morgan to give the company a “strategic review.”

“To further enhance our commitment to successfully completing our transformation, after the release of our year-end financial results, we engaged J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and RBC Capital Markets to assist the Company and our Board of Directors in reviewing RIM’s business and financial performance,” Heins said. “These advisers have been tasked to help us with the strategic review we referenced on our year-end financial results conference call and to evaluate the relative merits and feasibility of various financial strategies, including opportunities to leverage the BlackBerry platform through partnerships, licensing opportunities and strategic business model alternatives.”

RIM will reveal its almost certainly bad results for Q1 of its fiscal 2013 on June 28. The company said it will issue a more detailed update on the state of the company when it reports the Q1 results in June.