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(Sources: "Blackberry: The Inside Story of Research in Motion", by Rod McQueen, Coyotes.NHL.com. RIM.com, http://www.washingtonpost.com, http://crackberry.com)

If all Blackberries ever sold were placed end to end, the line would stretch from one end of Canada to the other; more than 3400 miles

The weight of all Blackberries sold is equal to 300 times the weight of the entire Phoenix Coyotes roster

In the third quarter of 2009 RIM added 4.4 million subscribers, a number equal to the population of Ireland

A recent poll showed that 9140 out of USA House of Representatives 9226 staff use Blackberrys, only 86 use iPhones.

On July 11th, 2010, at the moment Spanish midfielder Andrés Iniesta scored the World Cup winning goal, BlackBerry Messenger traffic increased by 280%

The Blackberry contains 16 million lines of code

"Blade", "Strawberry", "Outrigger" and "Byline" were all rejected before RIM settled on the name "Blackberry".

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The Dividend 10: Canada's top Dividend Paying Tech Stocks

One only has to look to some of Canada's largest tech companies to learn that the subject of tech stocks declaring a dividend, especially those loosely classified as growth stocks, is a contentious issue.

At CGI Group's (TSX:GIB.A) annual general meeting this past January the Globe and Mail reported that CEO Michael Roach was grilled repeatedly on the matter. "Personally, I would fare very well from a dividend,” he responded “I kiddingly say, 'My wife would love a dividend,”. Roach clarified his belief that dividends are not the most effective way to use cash, and that it is better to deliver superior returns over time. The subject of Research in Motion declaring a dividend is a contentious one with many institutional shareholders, who took up the debate after the Blackberry maker purchased 12.3 million of its own shares during the third quarter of 2009.

There are several issues at the heart of the matter. Some believe that the very declaration of a dividend is a white flag; a sign that management no longer possesses the confidence or direction to turn a nickel into a dime or a quarter. Others believe that a dividend is another way to line the pockets of the management, who often own large amounts of stock. Still others believe that, as in the case of RIM, the money could be put to better use in a share buyback program, which increases every shareholders value by effectively canceling outstanding shares.

Recently, with the majority of the companies listed below, investors have enjoyed not only a dividend but share appreciation as well. Stocks like Glentel, Pareto, MKX, and Computer Modeling Group have done more than enough to satisfy the hungriest of growth investors, much less kick in a dividend.

The list below is comprised of the Top Ten Dividend Paying tech stocks from the TSX and TSXV Technology Index. Our stipulations are that The Company has paid a dividend for at least four consecutive quarters on common shares. The list excludes one time or special payments. The stocks are ranked by dividend yield calculated on August 17th, 2010.

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Cantech Letter interviews Denzil Doyle

Nick Waddell

Denny, one of the things we talk about a lot on Cantech Letter is the idea Canada moving up the value chain, away from being an exporter of natural resources and towards a society that exports intellectual property and technology solutions. There's some relatively new data out there called the The Global Innovations Index (produced jointly by The Boston Consulting Group, The National Association of Manufacturers, and The Manufacturing Institute). This was first published in 2003, and it ranked the Canadian economy 9th in the world out of 82 countries. The 2009 publication ranks Canada 14th, with a projection to 15th before 2013. Canada is included in a cluster of "Second-tier Innovators" Does it seem to you that we are spinning our tires?

Denzil Doyle:

Well we've really done a terrible job of educating our political leaders as to the importance of technology. They don't really believe that technology can create jobs. They look upon it like amateur sports- we should do just enough to keep people appeased but surely it is not as important as oil and gas and gold. We need to educate our elected officials on how technology can be an instrument of economic diversification. Everyone is preaching doom and gloom for the U.S. these days, but I predict that it is their high tech industries that are going to bail them out – Intel, GE, Apple, IBM are all performing well and they are providing a better choice of jobs than we are in Canada.

NW: How do we educate our policy makers and our politicians?

DD:

I think our trade associations must play an entirely different role than they do at present. They are too quick to jump on government bandwagons like scolding Canadian industry for not doing enough R&D or for not being productive enough. We have low R&D because we have a Canadian industry that does not need much R&D and our productivity appears low because our manufacturing sector is dominated by branch plants that are operating at low levels on the value chain because that is what their foreign owners want them to do. The high paying management jobs are left in the head office. The sales- per- employee is typically lower in Canada than in the head office and our policy makers and politicians equate this to low productivity. If we had more head offices (true head offices) we would have more high paying jobs.
A lower Canadian corporate tax rate would also help because it would encourage transfer pricing that would leave more profits in Canada. Our “productivity” is due to many factors and it is irresponsible to imply that if Canadians would just run a little faster on the tread mill and buy more machinery, all would be well. Our trade associations should tell our politicians that if they want more R&D and more productivity, they will have to completely overhaul Canadian industry.

NW:

In the meantime, GM gets a bailout and Nortel doesn't, while Nortel has contributed more intellectual property to the country than any other company in our history....

DD:

The fact is our politicians simply don't understand situations like Nortel. They don't understand technology so they are fearful of it. Because our politicians aren't taking a leadership role, many Canadians believe that Nortel was just a bunch of spoiled brats typing away at their computers somewhere. Companies like GM get bailed out because politicians understand automobile manufacturing. Nortel had many problems that the government should have been aware of earlier in the game – like their bad book keeping. The people in government who see corporate books on a regular basis to collect taxes or hand out R&D grants should have smelled an accounting rat well before it came into the public domain. It was the accounting problems that eventually scared the politicians away.

NW: It seems to me that if we could clearly demonstrate the economic payback to the average Canadian, then Canadians would demand that we move up the value chain...

Doyle: "Does it really make sense that our young people, the people who will inherit this country, have to run off to Fort McMurray to slosh around in the oil patch to make a living?"

DD:

If I were tasked with selling this to the average Canadian, the first thing I would point out is that the Canadian economy is not nearly diversified enough.. Certainly not as diversified as the U.S. Think about it, does it really make sense that our young people, the people who will inherit this country, have to run off to Fort McMurray to slosh around in the oil patch to make a living? Fifty years ago, they flocked to Kitimat or Elliott Lake – now they are trying to turn Elliott Lake into a retirement community.
No one talks about the brain drain anymore, because the official story is that these problems are past us, but it is largely because we are pumping more money into publicly funded research – particularly the universities. However, there is still a serious youth unemployment problem in Canada. I still meet a lot of MBA's driving taxis, but the government and trade associations say we have a terrible skills shortage. I don’t believe it.

NW: Isn't the success of the RIM a living breathing example of this? We really don't have to speak in abstract terms about how technology can help, we can just point to Waterloo...

DD:

Well exactly, look what they're doing there. Look at the incredible benefits they have created for everyone. There is plenty of diversification there. Now they have the Perimeter Institute and the whole area has just taken off, and it's just getting started.

NW: Just a few years ago it might have seemed like hyperbole to call it another Silicon Valley, but it does seem to be going that way. Aside from RIM, Open Text is a big success, you have Dalsa, Descartes, up and comers like SandVine. Now Google and Microsoft are moving in with branch offices. I have even heard rumours that Microsoft may want to acquire RIM...

DD:

Oh god, I hope that doesn't happen! That would be the worst thing for the area. We really need RIM’s head office to stay in Canada – and all the others, so we can play the head office role that I discussed earlier. And yet you hear academics from time to time saying that a foreign takeover of RIM would be in the best interests of Canada. I am surprised that some trade association hasn’t jumped on that one and run with it. I have no problem with any of the big MNEs coming to Canada, but we badly need some MNEs of our own.

NW: In an interview we did with Jeffrey Crelinsten of the Impact Group about a white paper he did, one of his findings was that Canadian firms can sometimes be too R&D focused, that they don't involve the customer at an early enough stage. Mr. Crelinsten believes that early customer engagement "improves" technology in the sense that it maximizes the technology's value to customers who will then more likely pay for the product or service based on the technology. Is this your experience?

DD:

Well I am sympathetic to the work that Jeffrey Crelinsten and Geoff Barber, who co-authored that report, are doing. The fact is it is true that we aren't as good at commercialization as we could be. A lot of that comes down to the fact that there simply isn't as much money here- it's harder to access capital. There are lots of government programs but they are all focused on R&D, So we R&D everything to death. I say in my speeches that Canada will have a high tech industry when we have an investment industry that knows how to build one. And of course, as I said earlier that requires political will and public support.

NW: Speaking of Ottawa, did the breakup of Nortel demoralize the area? Or is the next Terry Matthews ready to emerge there?

DD:

I think Ottawa is ready to come back, I am seeing evidence of it and it's not just telecommunications companies this time. I'm seeing a lot of environmental deals starting to emerge, for instance. There is a company called Ensyn that is worth watching. It is a rapid pyrolysis company that turns biomass into various liquids – even food flavouring. I think there are a lot of very bright people in the area but I don’t see the equivalent of a Terry Matthews or another Mitel. Ensyn might be it.

NW: Are are still active in looking at smaller companies? Do you find small Canadian techs that excite you?

DD:

That's really where I still get a lot of satisfaction. I still spend two or three days a week at the office of my company Doyletech, I have been involved with a lot of different small companies in the past while. Right now I am working with a company called TalentMap. It's a web based service that measures the happiness curve of your employees.(Their level of engagement is how they put it, and the world seems to be ready for it). It's really cutting edge stuff and I believe the guys who started it can commercialize it quickly and make a lot of money from it. It's really fun helping to build something like that..

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Has Canada seen a more compact and dramatic rags-to riches-to rags story than that of Timminco? The spectacular rise and fall of the Toronto based solar-silcon and silcion metal producer seems to be torn from the pages of a Hollywood script or Broadway musical.

In late 2006, Timminco shares were worth pennies, closing that year at $.30. The stock hit nearly $34 two summers ago. In between was a time when The Company claimed it had developed a new process to purify silcon for use in solar panels. If they were right, investors surmised, the ramifications were absolutely massive.

On the other side were those who felt the technology Timminco claimed to have invented was too good to be true, a belief that was no doubt furthered by the fact that The Company was extremely secretive about the process and even its customers. Each side had its champions; in April of 2008, Ravi Sood of Lawrence Asset Management (now Navina Asset Management Inc) appeared on BNN, saying that “There is no evidence that they have any sort of proprietary technology. There is no evidence that they can actually deliver on their claims". Notorious Wall Street short stock seller, Manuel Asensio, joined in and began openly shorting Timminco. Jean-Francois Tardif and Peter Hodson, whose firm Sprott Asset management held a large position in Timminco, issued buy recommendations on the stock.

With Timminco trading at pennies again has this story met its finale or does the stock now represent a value? The Company has strung together a few quarters of steadily improved sales, and a quick look shows that the stock now passes the most basic of screens for value investors, as it trades at under one times sales. We break down the rest of the numbers in an updated "Quant Snapshot".

1. Price to Sales: .84 x sales

As of Friday, August 13th Timminco had 195,734,769 million shares outstanding. The price, as of the same date, was $.475. This gave The Company a market capitalization of $92.97 million. In the trailing four quarters Timminco posted sales of $109.63 million.

2. Cash to Market Cap: 1.61%

As of Q2, 2010 (June 30th, 2010) Timminco had a Cash and Short Term Investments position of $1.5 million. The Company's Market Capitalization, as of Wednesday, August 11th was $92.97 million.

3. Debt to Market Cap: Zero

As of Q2, 2010 (June 30th, 2010) Timminco had a Long Term Debt position of $7,000.

4. Three Year Growth: -11%

Revenue was $181.81 million in FY 2006. This fell to $104.57 million in FY 2009.

5. Enterprise Value to Sales: .87 X Sales

Timminco's Enterprise Value is $91.4 million, based on a market capitalization of $92.97 million, plus Long Term Debt of $7,000, minus Cash and Short Term Investments of $1.5 million. In the trailing four quarters, sales totaled $109.63 million.

All financial information about Timminco is gleaned from

their filings with the System for Electronic Document Analysis and

Retrieval (SEDAR)

All calculations are based on The Company’s closing share price as of

close August 13th, 2010: $.475

Sales from trailing four quarters: $109.63 million

Cash and Short Term Investments as of Q2, 2010 (June 30th, 2010): $1.5 million

Shares outstanding: 195,734,769

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TSX symbol: ABT
Current Price: $4.12 (August 11th, 2010)
Shares Outstanding: 46.65 million
Market Cap.: $192.20 million
Cash & Investments: $64.82 million

With the broader markets experiencing a major sell off today we revisit Absolute Software to evaluate potential breakdown and breakout targets on a weekly basis.

Absolute Software continues to make a major consolidation between $4.00 and $4.20 since our initial analysis in mid June, 2010.

Exercise absolute caution and focus on the broader markets for directional guidance.

Based on the updated chart analysis, Absolute Software still has a weekly breakdown target of $4.00. In early July shares of ABT closed, on a daily basis, under $4.00 but recovered that week to close above the $4.00 target solidifying this price point as a major support level (on a weekly basis). Later that month on July 28th, 2010 ABT shares reached a short term high of $4.52. Then next major weekly support level for shares of Absolute Software beyond $4.00 is $2.60, the stocks previous low reached on November 21st, 2008. We revise our short term breakout target from $5.00 to $4.50, ABT recent high reached in July, 2010.

Supporting indicators used in the analysis:

MACD

MACD stands for Moving Average Convergence / Divergence, is a technical analysis indicator created by Gerald Appel in the late 1970s. MACD shows the difference between a fast and slow exponential moving average (EMA) of closing prices. Since it is based on moving averages, MACD is inherently a lagging indicator.

Directional Movement

This indicator was created in 1978 by J. Welles Wilder. It is especially useful for trend trading strategies because it differentiates between strong and weak trends. DMI is a moving average of range expansion over a given period. The positive directional movement indicator (+DMI) measures how strongly price moves upward; the negative directional movement indicator (-DMI) measures how strongly price moves downward.

Slow Stochastic

Stochastic oscillator is a momentum indicator that uses support and resistance levels. Dr. George Lane developed this indicator in the 1950s. The term stochastic refers to the location of a current price in relation to its price range over a period of time. This method attempts to predict price turning points by comparing the closing price of a security to its price range.

Disclaimer

Cantechnical by Kirk Exner

Kirk Exner is President & CEO of High Tech Venture Capital (www.hightechvc.com) based in Vancouver, Canada. Established in 1998, High Tech Venture Capital is a privately owned company providing venture capital investment, corporate finance and consulting services to private & public technology companies in Canada. Mr. Exner holds a Masters in Business Administration from Schulich School of Business, York University, Canada’s top business school, and a B.Sc. Degree from the University of British Columbia. Prior to High Tech, Mr. Exner served as a technology business consultant and a corporate finance analyst (technology) for a Canadian brokerage firm.

This article is intended solely for information purposes. The opinions are those of the author only. Please conduct further research and consult your financial advisor before making any investment/trading decisions connected with any stock that is analyzed by the author. No responsibility is accepted for losses or unrealized gains that may result as a consequence of trading on the basis of this analysis.

The author does not own directly or indirectly shares of Absolute Software Corp., nor does he maintain a short position in the company.

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When your business is growing by leaps and bounds, it can be easy to lose sight of the big picture. For mobile network operators worldwide, their current situation is a double edged sword. Because everyone, including your grandmother, now has a Blackberry or an iPhone, the congestion and data capacity crisis has come to a head. Manage this situation well and you could access a fortune. Falter and another competitor with a cute name and cartoon logo takes your place.

That's where Waterloo's Sandvine comes in. Sandvine sells technology to service providers that gives them a window into the world of this chaotic traffic. The buzz-phrase in this space is "deep packet inspection", a technology that enables wireline and wireless networks to target data-overload issues. Sandvine's growth is clearly part of a larger trend; Infonetics Research estimates that deep packet inspection will grow from just over $200 million in 2008 to a more than $1.5 billion business by 2013.

Sandvine's Q2 2010, reported in early July, was The Company's fourth consecutive quarter of revenue growth. We break down the numbers in an updated "Quant Snapshot".

1. Price to Sales: 2.84 x sales

As of Wednesday, August 11th Sandvine had 136,541,835 million shares outstanding. The price, as of the same date, was $1.63. This gave The Company a market capitalization of $222.56 million. In the trailing four quarters Sandvine posted sales of $78.5 million.

2. Cash to Market Cap: 41.1%

As of Q2, 2010 (May 31st, 2010) Sandvine had a Cash and Short Term Investments position of $91.57 million. The Company's Market Capitalization, as of Wednesday, August 11th was $222.56 million.

3. Debt to Market Cap: Zero

As of Q2, 2010 (May 31st, 2010) Sandvine had a Long Term Debt position of zero.

4. Three Year Growth: 45.6%

Revenue was $31.66 million in FY 2006. This grew to $68.85 million in FY 2009.

5. Enterprise Value to Sales: 6x Sales

Sandvine's Enterprise Value is $130.99 million, based on a market capitalization of $222.56 million, plus Long Term Debt of zero, minus Cash and Short Term Investments of $91.57 million. In the trailing four quarters, sales totaled $78.5 million.

All financial information about Sandvine is gleaned from

their filings with the System for Electronic Document Analysis and

Retrieval (SEDAR)

All calculations are based on The Company’s closing share price as of

close August 11th, 2010: $1.63

Sales from trailing four quarters: $78.5 million

Cash and Short Term Investments as of Q2, 2010 (May 31st, 2010): $91.57 million

Shares outstanding: 136,541,835

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