By Adriano Marchese


Canadian stocks were firmly lower in midday trading Tuesday, with the S&P/TSX Composite Index dragged down 185.55 points by comments by U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who said he is prepared to speed up interest rate increases in the U.S. amid hot economic data. Most sectors were in the red at noon, with materials, health services and tech services stocks leading the declines while only tech, health tech and industrial services posted gains. Shares in BlackBerry Ltd. dropped after the company said it expects to book a non-cash, goodwill impairment charge at one of its units and that it sees lower revenue in the fourth quarter.

At midday, Canada's S&P/TSX Composite Index was down 0.97% at 20316.01, and the blue-chip S&P/TSX 60 fell 0.99% to 1222.46.

BlackBerry Ltd. shares were 13% lower at 4.75 Canadian dollars (US$3.49) after it said late Monday that it expects to incur a material non-cash and one-time goodwill impairment charge of $440 million for its secure communications platform Spark. Total revenue is expected by the company to be $151 million, close to the $157.3 million forecast by analysts. Last year in the same quarter, BlackBerry reported revenue of $185 million.


Other market movers:

Shares in Cymat Technologies Ltd. dropped 15% to C$0.35 after it announced plans to halve the exercise price of its outstanding purchase warrants to encourage their earlier exercise.

Pet Valu Holdings Ltd. shares were 3.1% lower at C$38.65 after reporting a slight decline in fourth-quarter profit after booking higher expenses in the quarter, including increased staffing and interest rate costs, while revenue growth beat forecasts.

Haivision Systems Inc.'s shares jumped 19% to C$4.40 after the video-streaming and visual-collaboration company received a takeover approach from video- and audio-infrastructure-solutions-maker Evertz Technologies Ltd.

Corus Entertainment Inc.'s shares fell 2.6% to C$1.87 after the media and content company cut its dividend payout in half to focus on debt reduction, declaring an annual dividend rate of C$0.12 per class B share and C$0.115 per class A share.


Write to Adriano Marchese at adriano.marchese@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

03-07-23 1221ET