BlackBerry's QNX Royalty Backlog Tops $1.2 Billion

Key Facts

BlackBerry said its QNX unit's royalty backlog exceeded $1.2 billion, according to a statement cited by Investing in coverage published on the day of the announcement. The backlog increased by more than $250 million since the end of the previous fiscal year as the unit added new design wins. The backlog stood at about $950 million when the company announced its previous fiscal year-end results, according to its annual earnings release filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. For historical comparison, the royalty backlog was about $865 million at the end of fiscal 2025, according to BlackBerry's annual report. The company defines the measure as "an estimate of future revenue from expected variable royalties." Actual revenue depends on production volumes and the potential termination or modification of customer contracts, according to the company's disclosure.

The contract with Coretura, announced in September, was the largest design win in QNX's history, according to BlackBerry's SEC filing. The company said the win adds "more than $100 million" to the unit's estimated royalty backlog. Coretura is a joint venture between Daimler Truck and Volvo Group, according to the contract announcement filed with the same regulator. The venture aims to develop a platform for software-defined commercial vehicles, the category covered by the announced collaboration with QNX and Vector. The design win concerns the Alloy Kore platform, which the two companies jointly developed as a foundational software layer for vehicles. The contract thus brings together a platform developed by QNX in partnership with Vector and a joint venture between truckmakers Daimler Truck and Volvo Group.

QNX and Vector said in their joint statement that the Alloy Kore platform significantly reduces the integration workload in vehicle software development. They added that the platform enables faster development cycles, among the benefits they attributed to the jointly developed foundational software layer. The stated benefits also include simplifying the work required for certification, according to the statement filed with the SEC. Alongside the commercial vehicle contract, design wins in other sectors contributed to growth in the unit's royalty backlog, according to the BlackBerry statement cited by Investing. These contracts covered robotics, industrial automation and medical devices, meaning the announced additions to the backlog also included applications outside the automotive business.

QNX posted revenue of $80.3 million in the fiscal second quarter ended in August, according to BlackBerry's earnings release. That represented an increase of 27% from the same quarter a year earlier, according to the statement filed with the SEC. Revenue exceeded management's forecast range of between $70 million and $75 million for the quarter, according to the company's quarterly report. Chief Executive John Giamatteo attributed the unit's record performance to the strength of its core automotive business. He said in the earnings release that the performance was "driven by strength in our core automotive business." The unit had posted record quarterly revenue of $78.7 million in the previous fiscal fourth quarter, up 20% year on year, according to the annual earnings release.

The improvement in fiscal second-quarter results extended to QNX's adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, according to the quarterly earnings release. Those earnings totaled $29.0 million, up 41% year on year, according to the same statement. BlackBerry said the margin on this adjusted earnings measure was 36% in the fiscal second quarter. In earlier trading on 6 October 2026, BlackBerry shares rose 5.3% during the morning, according to separate coverage published by Investing. The share price reached $9.565 during that trading session, according to the coverage.

In its outlook for the current fiscal year, BlackBerry raised its QNX revenue forecast to between $315 million and $325 million, according to the quarterly report filed with the SEC. The company had previously expected annual revenue for the unit of between $295 million and $312 million before updating the range. The updated outlook raises both the lower and upper ends of the unit's expected revenue for the current fiscal year. For the fiscal third quarter, BlackBerry expects QNX revenue of between $82 million and $88 million, according to the same quarterly report. That quarter ends on 30 November 2026, according to the date specified by the company in its earnings release.