Greenlight Capital Reconsiders Investment In Research In Motion
David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital has reconsidered its recent investment in Research In Motion. Drastically.
According to its latest 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Greenlight, which in May dumped 1.5 million of the 3.9 million RIM shares it purchased back in February, unloaded the remainder during the second quarter of this year.
Greenlight, which pared down its Apple stake and divested its holdings in Dell during the same period, hasn’t offered a rationale for the move, though a precipitous decline in RIM’s share price obviously has something to do with it.
RIM was trading in the $20 range when Greenlight invested in it. These days it’s treading water around $8, after the company delayed the release of its BlackBerry 10 operating system until 2013 — after the crucial back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons, not to mention the looming launch of Apple’s next generation iPhone.
That seems justification enough for the divestiture, which is being viewed with some trepidation by RIM observers who considered Einhorn’s investment in the company as a vote of confidence during a difficult time.
That said, it’s worth noting that another prominent investor was increasing his stake in RIM the same time Einhorn was unloading his. Last month, Prem Watsa’s Fairfax Financial nearly doubled its position in RIM.
