Good morning. BlackBerry Ltd. is nothing like the company whose smartphones once ruled the world. Now on its most stable footing since the late 2000s, the company is looking to dominate a new space: inside your car. More on that below, but first a look at today’s top news:
In the news
Cybercrime: Fortress Real Developments co-founders found guilty of fraud after a lengthy criminal trial
Resources: Fertilizer giant Nutrien is planning to build new West Coast port infrastructure and eyes sites in U.S. and Canada
Insurers: Why investors love Definity’s big acquisition, helping the home and auto insurer extend its hot run
Banking: Royal Bank of Canada is telling its employees to return to the office four days a week in a milestone move for employers. RBC has also announced a dividend increase, as it and CIBC were the last of the Big Six banks to report results today. Here’s a recap of the other big banks’ second-quarter earnings
In the know
In Parliament, it’s now time for action
- Next week: Prime Minister Mark Carney will present premiers with the broad outlines of legislation to fast track nation-building projects.
- Yesterday: In Carney’s first question period, his rivals wasted no time in peppering him with questions about his plans around the economy, tariffs and the fall budget.
- Between the lines: Carney and Doug Ford show two different paths for ‘unleashing’ Canada’s economy
Can new CEO John Giamatteo get investors on board? May 7, 2025John Kealey/The Globe and Mail
In focus
Rebirth in motion
Hi, I’m Sean Silcoff, a technology and life sciences reporter with The Globe and Mail.
I’ve returned to familiar stomping grounds with my latest magazine feature story: A look at the new CEO of BlackBerry, John Giamatteo, and what he’s been up to leading the company. It’s the cover of the June issue of ROB Magazine, and the topic of the editor’s note for the edition too.
Yes, BlackBerry is still a thing – alive and well and, believe it or not, on its surest footing since Apple and Android devices upended the smartphone market that the Canadian company had essentially created.
BlackBerry’s QNX division is now a dominant player in the software-defined vehicle market, providing the operating system underpinning the transformation of cars into computers on wheels. And the company has solved its biggest headaches on the new CEO’s watch: ditching a money-sucking cybersecurity business, slashing costs and refinancing its debt.
“The tough decisions that needed to be made have been made,” Niall O’Keeffe, co-founder of Fifthdelta, a British hedge fund manager that bought into BlackBerry, in 2021, told me. Giamatteo, he said, has put BlackBerry “back on offence, where it’s generating cash and can actually invest in the fast-growing areas.” BlackBerry chair Dick Lynch said Giamatteo “has been a very positive, transformative event” for the company, formerly known as Research In Motion.
Seeing Machines, a QNX partner, helps keep drivers focused by detecting when they've fallen asleep, are using their phone or have stopped watching the road.John Kealey/The Globe and Mail
Giamatteo and his team have slashed $150-million in annual costs, cut the head count by 37 per cent, shed more than a quarter of its real estate space and sold its once-promising cybersecurity business, Cylance, for a huge discount.
Giamatteo is nothing like BlackBerry CEOs past, and I got to spend several hours speaking with him for his first in-depth media interview since becoming CEO in December 2023. In fact, this is the first time he’s ever been the subject of a feature story anywhere, after a career that started with another well-known Canadian tech giant of a past era: Nortel Networks.
This is my second cover story for ROB Magazine on BlackBerry. I also wrote about Giamatteo’s predecessor, John Chen, 11 years ago, shortly after Chen was hired, and the latest story arrives exactly 10 years and two days to the date after publication of Losing the Signal, the award-winning book I co-wrote with Jacquie McNish on the rise and fall of BlackBerry. (It was very loosely adapted and fictionalized in the 2023 film BlackBerry). That book grew out of our original reporting for The Globe on the company’s downfall, published in September 2013, which won a National Newspaper Award.
Those works chronicled a BlackBerry that is a thing of the past.
The BlackBerry of the future looks promising but a big question is how strong a bond it will continue to have to its hometown of Waterloo, Ont., given that its last legacy business from its smartphone days (called unified endpoint management) is likely to be sold along with the rest of BlackBerry’s slow-growing but cash-rich secure communications division.
Giamatteo knows he has to keep investors happy. “It’s always going to be, ‘What will you do next year?’” he says. One part of that answer is: Deliver solid revenue growth at QNX. But it also means confronting a decision in the not-too-distant future that could cut much of BlackBerry’s ties to Waterloo. “Anything is on the table if it makes sense for shareholders.”
QNX created a digital twin of this robot, designed to handle delicate movements and force with great accuracy.John Kealey/The Globe and Mail
But the company is in a reasonably solid position: It has cash and options and is once again a technology leader in a very large market, albeit one whose products can’t be held in your palm. It has put out all the fires that soured investors on the company in the latter half of Chen’s tenure.
Special thanks to ROB Magazine Editor Dawn Calleja for pushing me for the better part of a year to do this story – and to John Giamatteo for finally agreeing to talk with me. Special thanks also to director of photography Clare Vander Meersch and John Kealey, who shot the neat photos on the cover and inside.
Charted
Measles cases surge across Southern Alberta
The provincial health authority said that site-specific advisories no longer capture the scope of potential risk in the South Zone, which covers the area south of Calgary. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious-diseases specialist, said the blanket advisory is concerning as it indicates that cases and exposures are multiplying at such a rate that they may no longer be possible to track.
Bookmarked
On our reading list
Bell in B.C.: Bell will open six data centres equipped to power AI models and apps in British Columbia.
Big banks: A $75 fee hike tells a story of the financial industry’s arrogance.
Beauty: E.l.f. buys Hailey Bieber’s Rhode makeup brand in deal worth about $1-billion.
Morning update
Global markets climbed after a U.S. court blocked most of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Wall Street futures advanced on the news while TSX futures followed sentiment higher.
Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was up 0.29 per cent in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 was little changed, Germany’s DAX rose 0.34 per cent and France’s CAC 40 gained 0.7 per cent.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed 1.88 per cent higher, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.35 per cent.
The Canadian dollar traded at 72.28 U.S. cents.