After a precipitous four-year plunge in its share price, Research In Motion Ltd. has tumbled from its perch as Canada’s most valuable tech company and is in danger of falling to third.
Cantech Letter, an online magazine focusing on Canadian listed technology companies, has published a ranking of the country’s top ten tech firms by market value that shows the impact of RIM’s stock value drop to less than $12 from $148 in mid-2008.
Montreal’s Valeant Pharmaceuticals Inc. is now in top spot with a value of $16 billion, usurping Waterloo-based device maker RIM, whose market cap has dropped to $6.26 billion from more than $30 billion last spring.
Valeant, formed through a merger with Mississauga’s Biovail Corp. in 2010, has seen revenue triple since 2008, largely on the strength of acquisitions.
While RIM’s market cap tumbled over the past twelve months its revenue has pulled back only modestly, from $19.9 billion in fiscal 2011 to $18.2 billion in 2012, Cantech says in its ranking report. RIM’s valuation has many predicting a Palm-like ending for the company, but new chief executive Thorsten Heins insists RIM’s new BlackBerry 10 devices, which do not yet have a launch date, will vault it back to relevance.
Cantech’s ranking places SXC Health Corp. in third spot with a market cap of $5.81 billion after reporting a 155 per cent jump in revenue in fiscal 2011. The company was founded in Milton, Ont. and maintains locations in Canada, but moved its head office to Chicago in 2006 after a Nasdaq listing.
Government focused IT company CGI Group Inc. of Montreal with a market value of $5.5 billion placed fourth while Waterloo software maker Open Text Corp. at $2.92 billion is in fifth.
The Cantech Letter ranking says the influence of technology on the overall market in Canada has faded amid a 10-year bull run in commodities and as the fortunes of Research in Motion and telecom gear maker Nortel Networks Corp. have declined.
[TheStar.com]
