TORONTO, May 27, 2026, 06:04 EDT
- BlackBerry’s U.S.-listed shares closed Tuesday at $8.42, up 6.45%, after reaching a 52-week high; its Toronto-listed shares ended at C$11.65, up 5.14%.
- The latest investor focus is on BlackBerry AtHoc’s U.S. government cloud-security recertification and QNX’s robotics push in Boston this week.
- The next formal earnings test is expected around June 25, when BlackBerry plans to report first-quarter fiscal 2027 results.
BlackBerry Limited heads into Wednesday’s session near its highest level in a year, after a sharp rally put the former smartphone name back on trading screens as a software and secure-communications stock rather than a handset relic.
The move matters now because the buying has started to cluster around real business markers: government certification, robotics software, an expanded QNX story and a renewed buyback. With regular trading on the NYSE and TSX due to open at 9:30 a.m. ET, the first test is whether Tuesday’s breakout can hold in the cash session.
The tape helped. U.S. stocks rose Tuesday after the Memorial Day break, with the S&P 500 up 0.6% and the Nasdaq Composite up 1.2% to a record, giving speculative software names a firmer backdrop.
BlackBerry’s freshest company catalyst came last week, when its AtHoc emergency communications platform completed 2026 FedRAMP Class D High recertification. FedRAMP is the U.S. government program that sets security rules for cloud services used by federal agencies. BlackBerry said the High level covers sensitive unclassified data where failure could have severe or catastrophic effects, and said AtHoc is trusted by 80% of U.S. federal agencies.
“Operational maturity and security rigor” is how Ramon Pinero, general manager of BlackBerry AtHoc, described the recertification. Dubhe Beinhorn, senior vice president for public sector at BlackBerry Secure Communications, said “trusted and compliant communications infrastructure is essential” as agencies face more complex threats. ACCESS Newswire
The other near-term hook is QNX, BlackBerry’s embedded-software business. QNX is showing robotics demonstrations at the Robotics Summit & Expo in Boston on May 27-28, including real-time operating system software, or software that lets machines respond predictably and immediately. The company said QNX President John Wall would join a panel with executives from Amazon Robotics, Locus Robotics and Universal Robots, putting BlackBerry beside bigger industrial-automation names in the physical-AI race.
“Robotics is at an inflection point,” Carsten Hurasky, QNX’s chief marketing officer, said in the event announcement, adding that the “safety stakes are incredibly high” when AI moves from screens into machines sharing space with people. ACCESS Newswire
The AI pitch also leans on Nvidia. In April, QNX expanded its collaboration with Nvidia to integrate QNX OS for Safety 8.0 with Nvidia IGX Thor and the Halos Safety Stack for robotics, medical and industrial edge-AI systems. Wall said “safety and determinism cannot be afterthoughts,” and framed the work as extending a proven architecture from cars into the “next wave of regulated, intelligent systems.” Stock Titan
BlackBerry’s April results gave investors numbers to trade on. The company reported fourth-quarter revenue of $156 million, up 10% from a year earlier. QNX revenue hit a record $78.7 million, up 20%, and its royalty backlog rose to about $950 million. Secure Communications revenue rose 8% to $72.5 million. Chief Executive John Giamatteo said BlackBerry was “no longer a company in transition,” calling it a “growth company.” Newswire
For fiscal 2027, BlackBerry guided for revenue of $584 million to $611 million, including QNX revenue of $290 million to $307 million and Secure Communications revenue of $270 million to $280 million. The company also expects about $100 million of operating cash flow for the year, after generating $50.3 million in fiscal 2026.
Capital return is part of the story too. A May 8 filing showed the Toronto Stock Exchange accepted BlackBerry’s renewed normal course issuer bid, a Canadian term for a share buyback program, allowing repurchases of up to 26.8 million shares, or about 4.58% of the public float. BlackBerry said it had bought back 18.1 million shares under the prior program at a weighted average price of $3.85.
Analyst tone has improved, but it is not uniform. MT Newswires reported that CIBC Capital Markets raised its price target on BlackBerry to $8.50 from $6 on May 22, with analyst Todd Coupland maintaining an Outperformer rating. That new target now sits close to Tuesday’s U.S. close, making follow-through harder to ignore and harder to earn.
The risk is that the stock has moved faster than the business. Barchart data showed BlackBerry up about 124% over the past 52 weeks, with relative strength above 80, an “overbought” reading that means the price move may be stretched. A pause in QNX design wins, weaker government spending, or a broader tech pullback could quickly turn the buyback and AI narrative into a valuation argument. Barchart.com
For now, the market has given BlackBerry a cleaner script than it has had in years: QNX for cars and robots, AtHoc for high-security government work, and cash flow to support buybacks. Wednesday’s open will show how much of that story is already in the price.