BlackBerry shares jump on hopes for growth in security, auto markets

Thomson Reuters

TORONTO (Reuters) - BlackBerry Ltd's Toronto-listed shares surged 8.5 percent on Tuesday as investors raised expectations that the technology company's cyber security and automotive software will post strong growth, an analyst said.

This month's global "ransomware" attack, dubbed WannaCry, has raised awareness of BlackBerry's security software business, while prospects for sales of the company's automotive software are on the up, said Nicholas McQuire, an enterprise research analyst at CC Insight.

The stock rose 9.1 percent in U.S. trading on Monday, a market holiday in Canada, after Ford Motor Co said late on Friday that it would start using an "over the air" system to update software on its Sync 3 interactive touchscreen system, which runs on QNX software from BlackBerry.

BlackBerry shares rose C$1.21 cents to C$15.24 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. They dipped 0.3 percent to $11.29 in U.S. Nasdaq trading, following Monday's rally.

A BlackBerry representative could not immediately be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Solarina Ho and Alastair Sharp in Toronto; Editing by Jim Finkle and Bill Rigby)

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