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BlackBerry maker BlackBerry (BBRY) got more votes of confidence today, with Jefferies & Co.'s Peter Misek reiterating a Buy rating on the stock and a $19.50 price target, citing his "store checks" showing "solid demand" for the recently released "Z10" touch-screen BlackBerry, and Wells Fargo's Maynard Um taking over coverage of the stock from Jennifer Fritzsche and raising it to an Outperform from Market Perform with a $19 to $20 "valuation range."

BlackBerry stock is up 73 cents, or almost 5%, at $16.78.

Misek writes that he's contacted 50 stores following the debut of the Z10 at last week's media event in New York; the phone went on sale in the U.K. the next day, and in Canada this week, with RIM yesterday saying that it had its best product debut ever in Canada, based on initial order patterns.

Misek found that "half of the stores were sold out" in Canada, with Toronto and Vancouver stores In Toronto and Vancouver most of the remaining stores only had limited stock (generally a few white Z10s) with more stock available in the Prairie provinces." Best Buy (BBY) stores in Canada had a "hugely successful launch," he cites the chain as saying.

In contrast to a report yesterday from Canaccord Genuity's Mike Walkley, who said that Z10 supplies were limited to 15 units in most stores, Misek thinks supplies were generally higher than that:

Some larger stores had 30-50 in their initial shipment with flagships getting 100+. Most stores had limited information on the timing and size of additional shipments as BBRY drop ships but most expected more early next week.

However, Misek is actually more interested in BlackBerry's new "BlackBerry Enterprise Server," or BES, version 10, rolled out last month, which promises to manage multiple devices, including Apple's (AAPL) iPhone and phones based on Google's (GOOG) Android software, not just BlackBerry.

He thinks the trend is looking good for adoption of the software:

After our initial upgrade and highlighting of Blackberry's new MDM strategy, several clients have noted that Blackberry is not listed on Gartner's magic quadrant for MDM. We believe this is due to RIM's true MDM offering being new, and based on our checks we believe Gartner will add Blackberry to its next update. We have no idea what the grade will be but based on our anecdotal checks most enterprises that have trialed BES 10 seem truly impressed. We believe 1,600 out of Blackberry's estimated 10,000 enterprise installed base were trialing before the formal download was made available about two week ago. Since then we believe hundreds of additional enterprises have downloaded the BES 10 server software and that overall 20% of the Fortune 500 are in trials. We believe the additional enterprise trials are beginning to support our BES thesis.

Wells's Um today writes he upgraded the stock based on a belief that "gross margin will improve as the mix of BB10 devices ramps and the existing BB7 portfolio (negative gross margin) declines."

Um is modeling sales of the Z10, and of the forthcoming QWERTY "Q10" model, to sell perhaps 1.5 million units in its first quarter, based on having signed up 13 carriers. He thinks that compares quite favorably with new product introductions by Palm, which had 720,000 in sales of its "Pre" smartphone when it came out in 2009 on Sprint-Nextel (S), and Motorola, now part of Google, with its "CLIQ/Droid," which sold 2 million units. There could even be higher sales than he's expecting, and every 100,000 additional Z10 units sold adds another 2 cents to BlackBerry's EPS, he writes.

Despite lots of challenges and "unknowns" for BlackBerry, writes Um, sales of Z10 with a higher profit margin will lift overall company gross margin:

We believe a key determinant of valuation for BlackBerry will be its ability to drive increased gross margins on the back of BlackBerry 10. Prior to BlackBerry 10, we estimate BlackBerry was generating a gross profit loss on its hardware devices sales. We estimate BlackBerry 10 devices will have gross margin of around 27%. Our assumption is based on the analysis of other companies that have launched new products at similar price points – namely Motorola and Palm. In fact, by our calculation, both Palm and Motorola had higher gross margins than what we are forecasting for BlackBerry. However, we are estimating a lower gross margin on the view that the company will be aggressive with co-marketing, some of which will be an above-the-line item that impacts gross margin. [...] Despite this, we expect mix of BlackBerry 10 to drive gross margin upward as shown in the following chart. We forecast hardware gross margin to increase to 13.6% in FY 2014 from -3.8% in FY 2013. This is predicated onthe view that legacy BlackBerry 7 hardware will decline year over year and new BlackBerry 10 hardware will increase year over year.

Um adds that BlackBerry's service revenue from corporations will hold up for a little while:

We believe enterprise service revenue (52% of BlackBerry's service revenue) will not be impacted materially until FY2015 given the timing of the release of the BES 10 service pack and we have already modeled the potential impact to consumer service revenue.

Um is modeling $11.4 billion for this fiscal year ending this month, and a net loss of $1.08, and $12.66 billion next year and a net loss of 22 cents. The Street is modeling $11.3 billion and $1.17 loss this year, and $12.4 billion and a 51-cent loss for next year.