Blackberry sells Canadian real estate holdings to Spear Street Capital for $288 million

Blackberry Ltd, the famous handset maker announced Monday that it has agreed to sell most of its Canadian real estate holdings to Spear Street Capital for $288 million.

Blackberry announced intentions of unloading its real estate holdings in Canada in January this year. In March, the company released a statement saying that it had found potential bidders but would only release more details once the parties agreed to all the terms and conditions.

On Monday, the Ontario-based smartphone maker announced that Spear Street Capital agreed to purchase its property portfolio and that it would be leasing back some of the buildings from Spear Street.

The portfolio includes more than 3 million square feet of commercial space and vacant parcels, reports Fox Business. The company hopes on closing 80 percent of the transaction by the end of May and the remaining by the end of the third quarter.

Meanwhile Spear Street, a famous real estate firm said that the major reason to invest in the portfolio was Waterloo's up and coming start-up boom, just like America's Silicon Valley.

"A lot of larger tech companies are looking for talent, and they're going where the talent is. Not everyone is going to pick up and move to Silicon Valley because it is tough to do and expensive, so a lot of the larger companies are going to where the talent is and that is engineering and university centers, and Waterloo certainly stacks up well in that regard," John Grassi, president of Spear Street told Reuters.

Blackberry's announcement comes just months after it sold off five buildings to the University of Waterloo for $36.44 million. The decision to do away with its properties came as the firm has been struggling with poor smartphone sales and falling revenue.

The company hopes to boost profitability by raising cash from liquidating its real estate assets and investing it in its core business.

"The successful sale of property in Canada will help us move toward our goal of continued operational efficiency," BlackBerry CEO and Executive Chair John Chen said in the March statement.

Blackberry has been losing market share in the global smartphone industry as iOS and android have taken over. It's December to March market share in the U.S. slid by about 1 percent, while the rest of the players remained largely unchanged, according to a new ComScore report.