What happened
Shares of BlackBerry (BB +0.37%) soared Thursday despite an apparent lack of company-specific news. Investors may have been responding to a report published earlier this week that said the company sold some of its patents to Huawei. The tech stock closed the trading day up by 25.4%.
So what
Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail reported Tuesday that BlackBerry had sold 90 smartphone technology patents to the Chinese technology giant Huawei. BlackBerry has been moving away from its former smartphone focus in the past few years.
Image source: Getty Images.
BlackBerry stopped manufacturing smartphones back in 2016, but the company still has a large number of patents relating to those devices. Selling some of them is yet another clear sign that it has moved on and is putting its efforts into other businesses.
That said, the sale of 90 patents, out of the tens of thousands that BlackBerry reportedly has, doesn't appear to be worth the share price surge that the company's stock experienced Thursday. But investors may be continuing to express their positive sentiment toward the tech stock, which is up more than 100% over the past six months.
Now what
Despite the recent share price run-up, BlackBerry's stock has been volatile over the past 12 months. For example, it skyrocketed in early December when the company announced that it was teaming up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to create an intelligent automotive platform to analyze vehicle sensor data. But it gave back some of those gains later in the month.
With Thursday's sharp share price spike, it appears that traders are eager to drive the company's stock upward on small bits of news. This suggests that shareholders are likely to experience further volatility ahead.
