CGI Group passes BlackBerry as Canada's most valuable tech (again)

Get offa my cloud. CGI Group leapfrogged RIM once again today in the race to Canada's most valuable tech stock.

It seems everyone showed up for RIM’s big party except for Mr. Market. On a day when the company revealed new devices that wowed the New York Times and impressed The Wall Street Journal’s Walter Mossberg, shares of the freshly minted BlackBerry (whose ticker symbol will, on Monday, change to BBRY on Nasdaq and BB on the TSX) fell by 12%.

The culprit, many felt, was the lag time on the company’s Q-10 phone, which is the one with the physical QWERTY keyboard. It won’t be available until at least April. The Z-10, meanwhile, will be ready for Canadians next week, and the rest of the world in March. Meanwhile, new data suggests the BlackBerry brand is undergoing a revival in the US market.

Today’s hit means RIM’s market cap (on the Nasdaq) slipped to $7.09-billion.

Meanwhile, Montreal’s CGI Group, which passed RIM in market cap this past summer after the massive acquisition of Logica, but then fell back after RIM’s recent run, reported Q1 results that drove its stock up more than 8%. CGI’s market cap closed the day at $8.09 billion, vaulting it past RIM once again.

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CGI Group Inc. earned $22.4-million on revenue of $2.53-billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2013.

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Tom Liston said CGI Group’s Q1was solid, with revenue ahead of his expectations and EBIT and adjusted EPS in line with what he anticiapted. Liston believes CGI management can turn Logica’s laclustre EBIT of 6% into something in the double digits. In a research update to clients this morning, he maintained his BUY rating on CGI, and raised his target from $28.25 to $30.50.

CGI Group was founded in Montreal in 1976. The Company’s name is an acronym for Consultants to Government and Industry. Midway through 2010, CGI picked up Stanley, an Arlington, Virginia based systems integrator for a billion dollars. But the company was just getting started; on August 20th, CGI completed the largest acquisition in its history, picking up London-based Logica Plc, a company that was actually larger CGI, for $2.64-billion. CGI Group now ranks as the sixth largest independent information technology and business process services firm in the world.

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