TSX Ends Marginally Up

(RTTNews) - The Canadian stock market ended marginally up on Friday after spending much of the day's session in negative territory as investors looked for direction amid a lack of triggers.

The benchmark S&P/TSX Composite Index ended with a small gain of 15.14 points or 0.07% at 20,230.26. The index, which slipped to a low of 20,146.40 early on in the session, hit a high of 20,240.23 a few minutes before the closing bell. The Index gained about 1.15% in the week.

Financial, energy and industrials shares found some support, while healthcare and materials shares were a bit weak. Information technology, consumer discretionary and telecom stocks were mostly subdued.

BlackBerry (BB.TO) ended more than 4.5% down despite reporting better than expected quarterly earnings. A rating downgrade of the stock triggered a sell-off at the counter.

BlackBerry posted first-quarte revenue of $174 million, down 15.5% from a year ago, and off 17.1% sequentially. The company lost 5 cents a share on a non-GAAP basis, in line with expectations.

B2Gold Corp (BTO.TO) shed about 3.3%, while Air Canada (AC.TO), Kinross Gold Corp (K.TO), Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CM.TO) and Suncor Energy (SU.TO) lost 1 to 1.7%.

Sierra Wireless (SW.TO), Canada Goose Holdings (GOOS.TO), Tecsys Inc (TCS.TO), Fairfax Financial Holdings (FFH.TO), Linamar Corporation (LNR.TO), Cogeco Inc (CGO.TO) and Brookfield Business Partners (BBU.UN.TO) gained 1.5 to 5.5%.

Akumin Inc. (AKU.TO) shares climbed more than 7% after the company announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Alliance HealthCare Services, Inc., a provider of radiology and oncology solutions to hospitals, health systems and physician groups. The transaction has an enterprise value of $820 million.