BlackBerry CEO John Chen shows off the new Passport device at it's launch in Toronto on Wednesday, September 24, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris YoungThe Canadian Press
The Toronto stock market climbed Friday, boosted by a jump in BlackBerry shares after the smartphone company's latest financial report beat analyst estimates but showed the company is still far from profitable.
The S&P/TSX composite index advanced 26.40 points to 14,919.97, propped up by gains in infotech and energy stocks. It provided some much needed relief to investors, who saw the Toronto market plunge more than 200 points Thursday, capping off a fifth day of declines.
The Canadian dollar was 0.20 of a cent lower at 89.93 cents (U.S.), pressured by a stronger greenback and a positive U.S. GDP revision.
BlackBerry says it lost $207-million (U.S.) or 39 cents per share for the quarter ended Aug. 31. On an adjusted basis, the Waterloo, Ont., company's loss amounted to two cents per share — better than the loss of 16 cents per share that analysts estimated ahead of the report.
BlackBerry CEO John Chen admitted that the company is still only halfway in its return journey to be profitable. Chen joined the company last November and is in the midst of attempting a turnaround, with the goal of creating a leaner organization. So far, he has made progress towards the goal of breaking even on cash flow by the end of fiscal 2015.
BlackBerry has been struggling in the face of intense competition from Apple's iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy models. The company released its latest smartphone, the Passport, earlier this week, in hopes of winning back its once-loyal corporate customers. Its shares jumped more than six per cent, or 69 cents, to $11.57 (Canadian) on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Meanwhile, Wall Street snapped back from losses from the previous day.
The Dow Jones industrials added 80.37 points to 17,026.17 while the Nasdaq gained 20.20 points to 4,486.95 and the S&P 500 index saw an uptick of 6.69 points to 1,972.68. The U.S. indexes had ended Thursday with the steepest declines in two months, as the Dow shed nearly 250 points.
Shares in Janus Capital Group surged more than 34 per cent Friday, after it was announced that bond investor Bill Gross, a managing director of PIMCO, is joining the company.
Gross was one of the founders of PIMCO in 1971, building the Newport Beach, Calif.-based investment company into one of the world's largest bond managers. Today, the company manages US$1.9 trillion in assets. He will join Janus at the end of the month and manage the company's recently launched unconstrained Bond Fund.
Shares of Janus jumped $3.86, or 35 per cent, to $14.95 in early trading.
The markets were also boosted by the latest U.S. GDP figures.
The third and final official estimate for second-quarter gross domestic product says the world's largest economy expanded at an annual rate of 4.6 per cent in the spring, the fastest pace in more than two years. It also suggests the growth will build on the economy's momentum for the rest of the year.
The growth in the April to June quarter, reported by the U.S. Commerce Department, was in sharp contrast to a decline of 2.1 per cent for the first three months of the year, which included unusually harsh winter weather.
In other corporate news, shares in retailer Sears Canada fell nearly three per cent, or 35 cents, to $12.40 (Canadian), a day after its CEO Douglas Campbell said he was resigning and returning to the United States by the end of the year for family issues. Campbell had taken over the company for about a year.
On the commodity markets, the November crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange was up 51 cents at $93.04 (U.S.) a barrel. December bullion dipped $7 at $1,214.90 an ounce, while December copper took back a penny at $3.05 a pound.