WATERLOO, Ont. -- BlackBerry chief executive John Chen is frustrated by negative investor reaction to the smartphone company's latest quarterly results, which he says are within the parameters of the plan he has outlined for months.

"They're not listening to what I said," Chen told a roundtable of reporters Friday from the company's head office in Waterloo, Ont., after posting third-quarter financial results.

 

Watch on BNN.ca: One-on-one with BlackBerry CEO John Chen

"They're giving me more credit of being more of a super-human being than I really am."

The head of BlackBerry, who was brought in just over a year ago to make the money-losing operation profitable, zeroed in on the investment community, saying analysts boosted their expectations for BlackBerry's revenue higher than they should have.

"We told them that this quarter the revenue would be lower, and none of them listened -- they jacked their revenue up," he said.

"There's a level of frustration on our part that they don't understand the steps we have to go through to strengthen the balance sheets."

Earlier in the day, BlackBerry Ltd. (TSX:BB) delivered a financial report which showed progress was being made towards an improved bottom line. But investors focused mainly on weakness in the company's revenue.

Shares of the company dropped as much as 10 per cent shortly after the results were released, recovering most of the decline later in the day. By late afternoon, BlackBerry stock was down just six cents or 0.5 per cent at C$11.61 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

In the third quarter, BlackBerry posted US$793 million in revenue, versus analyst predictions of US$931 million, and down from $1.19 billion a year ago.

Net losses were narrowed to US$148 million, equivalent to 28 cents per share, compared with a far deeper loss of US$4.4 billion or US$8.39 per share in the same period a year ago.

On an adjusted basis, the smartphone maker delivered a small profit of $6 million, or one cent per share, beating expectations of an adjusted loss of five cents per share, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters.

During the quarter, BlackBerry recognized revenue on 1.9 million devices, compared with the second quarter when it sold 2.1 million phones.

The pullback offers another sign of shifting priorities at the company as services and software begin to eclipse the money it's garnering from handsets. During the period, 46 per cent of revenue came from phones, while another 46 per cent was from services it offers and eight per cent from software.

Sales of BlackBerrys slipped 10 per cent in the three months ended Nov. 29, a period which saw the company introduce the large-screen Passport model as a way to slow the rapid decline of its customer base.

On a call with analysts, Chen urged investors to remember he said rebuilding the company would take time.

"To see this revenue growth, we probably need a couple quarters," he said.

"It is my belief that we can grow and stabilize the revenue" in the next financial year, which starts in March, he said.