If Whatsapp is valued @ $19 Bn, BBM is just @ $240 Million

 Facebook Inc's $19 billion bid for fast-growing mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp sent shares of BlackBerry Ltd higher before the opening bell on Thursday as investors placed bets that the smartphone maker's own messaging platform has been undervalued.

BlackBerry shares were up as much as 9 percent in trading after the bell on Wednesday as the deal boosts valuation metrics around the company's own BlackBerry Messaging service.

BlackBerry Messaging, or BBM, was a pioneering mobile-messaging service, but its user base has failed to keep pace with that of WhatsApp and other upstarts, in part because BlackBerry had long refused to open the service to users on other platforms.

WhatsApp, with a user base of about 450 million, has grown rapidly. Its service works on Apple Inc's iOS platform, Google Inc's market-dominating Android operating system and with devices powered by both the Windows and BlackBerry operating systems.

BBM remains popular, even though BlackBerry devices have waned in popularity. Late last year, the Waterloo, Ontario-based company finally opened the messaging platform to users of iPhones and Android devices, and the number of the service's active users has grown to more than 80 million.

However, investors have attributed little value to the asset within the company. In a note to clients on Tuesday, Raymond James analyst Steven Li broke out a sum-of-parts valuation of BlackBerry and pegged the value of BBM at merely $240 million, or $3 per user.

Facebook's valuation of WhatsApp translates into roughly $42 per user, and that could lead investors and analysts to rethink their valuation of the asset within BlackBerry.

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