Canada Stocks Rise After Teck Earnings Beat Forecast: RIM Falls

Canadian stocks rose for the first time in four days as mining shares advanced after Teck Resources Ltd. (TCK/B) reported profit that beat estimates and copper rebounded from a six day decline.

Teck, Canada’s biggest base-metals producer, rallied 5.8 percent after higher coal and copper prices boosted first- quarter results. Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. rose 3 percent as wheat rallied. Research In Motion Ltd. fell 3.8 percent as AT&T Inc. said it won’t immediately release software that enables e-mail on the BlackBerry maker’s new tablet.

The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index rose 34.50 points, or 0.3 percent, to 13,736.83 at 4 p.m. in Toronto.

“You can get some pretty good reaction to earnings,” said David Cockfield, who helps oversee about C$300 million at MacNicol & Associates Asset Management in Toronto, referring to Teck. Earlier this month “we broke through 14,000 in the TSX without any difficulty at all. I still think it’s a resistance level, until we get some reasonably dramatic news that things are improving, particularly in the U.S.”

The Canadian equity benchmark had fallen 1 percent over the previous three days as banks and commodity producers declined on concern economic growth will slow after U.S. jobless claims topped forecasts and Standard & Poor’s lowered its outlook on U.S. debt to negative.

Teck Rises

Copper halted its longest slump since June after Freeport- McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. said it suspended operations at a mine in Indonesia, fanning supply concerns.

Teck, the world’s second-largest exporter of metallurgical coal, said profit excluding some items was 76 cents a share as coal sales topped its forecast. Earnings beat the 75 cent average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The shares rose 5.8 percent to C$51.62, the first gain in 10 days.

Quadra FNX Mining Ltd. (QUX), which explores for copper and other metals in the United States, Canada, and northern Chile, advanced 4.4 percent to C$14.15. Quadra estimated its Victoria project contains 3.4 billion pounds of contained copper equivalent and projected it will start production in 2017.

Black Diamond Group Ltd. (BDI), a provider of modular structures for temporary work space and energy services, fell 2.5 percent to C$26.30 after saying it plans to offer 1.8 million shares at C$26.10 each as part of a capital expansion to meet demand from oil-sands developers.

Potash Corp. rose for the first time in four days, gaining 3 percent to C$54.84, as wheat rose on supply concerns after dry weather in the past week hurt crops in the U.S. Agrium Inc., Canada’s No. 2 fertilizer producer, rose 2.4 percent to C$86.94.

Tethering Issue

RIM retreated 3.8 percent to C$50.85 after Business Insider said on its website that AT&T’s policy makes the new PlayBook tablet “pretty much useless.”

AT&T said it “only just” received a test version of software that enables e-mail on the PlayBook that was released today, and won’t release software that enables e-mail on the device.

The issue may be resolved soon and the decline may represent a “short-term buying opportunity.” said Greg Taylor, who helps oversee about C$5 billion ($5.06 billion) as a money manager at Aurion Capital Management in Toronto.

To contact the reporter on this story: Stephen Kleege in New York at skleege@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael P. Regan at mregan12@bloomberg.net