OTTAWA — For BlackBerry, the smartphone company recently known for producing relentlessly grim financial results, the announcement on Thursday of a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss counts as good news. Although BlackBerry’s management stopped well short of declaring a turnaround, the results suggested that severe cost-cutting and efforts to refocus the company might be at least stabilizing it.

“This is, of course, the very beginning of our task and we hope that we will be able to report better results going forward,” John S. Chen, the chief executive, told the annual meeting of shareholders shortly after releasing the results. Earlier, he told analysts, “We feel pretty good about where we are.”

Accounting adjustments enabled BlackBerry to report a $23 million, or 4 cents a share, profit for its last quarter. Without those noncash charges, however, the company lost $60 million, or 11 cents a share, during the period.

Revenue, which had been in free fall, declined only 1 percent compared with the previous quarter, to $966 million. Its cash rose by $429 million, to $3.1 billion, during the same time period, although that was mainly attributable to real estate sales and a tax refund. Without those two items, the company would have consumed $255 million in cash.