After drifting lower for most of this week, BlackBerry shares got a nice boost in the last two trading days thanks to two analyst upgrades. For those keeping track, the stock is now hovering around $14.50, which is about a buck higher than Wednesday’s close.

French investment bank Société Générale upgraded BlackBerry from a sell to a buy rating on Thursday morning. The analyst at SocGen believes BlackBerry sold about 4 million Z10 devices in the quarter than just ended, which would be an increase from only one million last quarter. 

When I watched the unveiling of iOS7 in yesterday’s live stream of Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference I couldn’t help but notice that some of the new gestures seemed to be strikingly similar to those in BlackBerry 10. It’s easy to make a case that Apple’s latest mobile OS heavily borrows from the best of BlackBerry. 

But none of that matters. The average iPhone customer doesn’t read enthusiast blogs on the topic, and probably doesn’t care if a feature is stolen from another platform. The simple truth is that everyone is going to copy useful features when it makes sense to do so. When Facebook announced “chat heads” it seemed to me that BlackBerry should borrow the idea and implement it in BBM. 

Over the last few days lots of people have asked me questions about the timing of certain negative analyst research notes on BlackBerry. Tero Kuittinen, over at BGR wrote a pretty solid piece describing some of the most recent action, including Pacific Crest’s recent report suggesting that BlackBerry is manufacturing significantly more product than it is selling.

Kuittinen, who has an equity research background, offers the following explanation:

One major factor motivating hysterical research notes and wild estimate swings is simply a raw need for attention. There are too many small and mid-sized brokerages out there. Most clients have slashed the funds they use to pay for research over the past decade, and many hedge funds have the habit of calling analysts with the highest and lowest estimates on the Street and ignoring the middle.

I thought I’d take the time to expand on this because the vast majority of readers probably don’t have much of an idea how the world of equity (stock) research works. 

Ever since the Q10 started selling across a few markets, we’ve seen strong positive reports about the launch. We’ve heard that BlackBerry is manufacturing 3 Q10s for every Z10 right now, and this metric was also reported by Bluefin in their report from last week. 

Not too long ago I wrote a quick editorial about the comment Thorsten Heins made to Bloomberg regarding his expectation to sell tens of millions of Q10s. I think it’s good for the stock price in the near term, meaning over the next couple of quarters. But a few people have emailed me privately asking if this means BlackBerry is back - as in really back and back to stay.

So far this week we’ve seen some negative comments out of the usual bearish Wall Street analysts.  If you follow the stock, you know who these guys are. They tend to avoid any kind of balanced analysis, always hammering on whatever negative points they can find.

BlackBerry’s stock was hammered yesterday due to a report by research firm Detwiler Fenton, who claimed that Z10 devices were being returned in unusually high numbers.  From Wednesday’s closing price to the lows on Thursday, BlackBerry lost over $1.25 per share.  It closed at $13.55, down from $14.69 the day before, for a loss of nearly 8%.  

The claim seemed absurd, essentially saying that in some cases returns are exceeding sales.  I challenged this claim on Twitter, and I think anyone with half a brain who stopped to think about the claim realized it was neither logical nor worth repeating.  But the media is in the business of getting website traffic, and when a story like this hits the wires it spreads virally.  

Despite BlackBerry and Verizon publishing statements early in the day, geared to neutralize the negative headlines, the topic still dominated BlackBerry-related discussion yesterday.  

When BlackBerry announced its Q4 results on March 28 we celebrated a Street-beating earnings result. Even if you ignore the tax benefit that the company recorded, BlackBerry delivered much better financial results than expected.

A big part of that beat came from the gross margin line, which came in at 40% versus the low 30's estimates. In the financial press release, the company said the earnings improvement came from improved ASPs and higher margin on hardware. 

Analyst estimates on Z10 gross margins differ widely. We have some analysts suggesting margins are 40% on the new hardware. Then we have others, such as GMP’s Deepak Kaushal, who believe Z10 margins started their journey closer to 20%, as I wrote about here.

Canada’s Export Development Corporation (EDC), a crown corporation, is providing Telefonica with a 200 million euro loan to buy BlackBerry products.  That works out to about $255 million US dollars, and if we assume it’s for BlackBerry 10 products, it suggests Telefonica is buying somewhere between 500,000 and 700,000 devices depending on the price assumptions you make.  Remember that BlackBerry will be releasing more models with different price points.

So the order isn’t going to be earth shattering, but it’s nice to see things progressing on the rollout of BB10. Telefonica is a Spanish operator, but they’re also pretty big in Latin America. 

EDC gets involved in a lot of transactions like this.  I’m not an expert in EDC financings by any means, but I have seen plenty of them in my time covering Canadian stocks.  When the EDC gets involved it just greases the wheels a bit, making it easier for BlackBerry to do business with with the buyer, Telefonica. 

Now that we’re one week beyond the latest BlackBerry earnings report, I thought I’d take a look at what some analysts are saying, and chime in with my own thoughts.

On the bullish front, we have Richard Tse from Cormark, who reflected on the earnings over the long weekend.  Here is a summary on Tse’s comments from CanTech Letter. 

It seems Tse believes that the quarterly results show BlackBerry management is up to the task of transitioning to its new platform successfully.“In our view, given the hyper competitive market and major internal product transition, we believe the results of the past two quarters have been nothing short of remarkable,” said Tse. “Operating improvements thus far under such extreme challenges give us reason to believe in BlackBerry’s ability to execute on BB10 as having better odds than we originally would have anticipated.”

BlackBerry will announce Year-End and Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2013 results on Thursday

One of the most bullish analysts on the Street with respect to BlackBerry is Gus Papageorgiou from Scotiabank (formerly called Scotia Capital). He recently outlined the reason for his near-term optimism in a Q4 earnings preview report, and I had a read through it.  He makes a good case.

For Q4 (which will be reported Thursday morning), he’s expecting 1.0 million Z10 shipments, improved gross margin and higher than consensus ASP (average selling price). Papageorgiou expects the Z10 to bring in ASPs of $550, which he notes is higher than the $506 Street estimate. I think the Street has played things very conservatively on ASP in the past. Just a few months ago everyone assumed the Z10 would sell for only $400.  Folks - remember when I say “sell for” I mean what BlackBerry sells to the carrier for. Anyway, now analysts expect $506 and Scotia is calling for $550.  If they are right, it’s materially positive.

Following a week of largely positive BlackBerry news, this week has started off with a major analyst downgrade.  Goldman Sachs analyst Simona Jankowski has downgraded from a buy to a hold recommendation, cutting her target price to $17 (previously $19). 

I got a copy of the report (thanks, sender) and had a chance to go over it this afternoon.  In a nutshell, Goldman has two main reasons for the downgrade.  Those reasons are 1) the AT&T launch; and 2) consensus estimates have been rising. 

Let’s break it down into plain English ...