 Mark Sue reiterated a Sector Perform rating on shares of BlackBerry and an $18 price target, after raising his estimates for this year to reflect pent-up demand for the Q10.){kind=link}
As we wrote earlier, the Q10 is reportedly blowing the Z10 out of the water in terms of sales in the UK. So much so, that RBC’s (Royal Bank of Canada) Mark Sue reiterated a Sector Perform rating on shares of BlackBerry and an $18 price target, after raising his estimates for this year to reflect pent-up demand for the Q10.
Sue states:
Available at Selfridges’s retail stores and online, the launch saw modest crowds. Strong initial sell-through of the Q10 at Selfridges may bode well for launches in the U.K. and Canada, two die-hard BlackBerry markets. Too early to extrapolate early ramp to other end markets.
Sue raised his May-quarter (fiscal Q1) estimate for just BB10-based BlackBerry units to shipments of 2.75 million from a prior 2-million estimate. He’s maintaining an expectation for a total of 10.7 million BB10 smartphone shipments this calendar year. He now models Q1 revenue of $3.1 billion and a 10-cent loss per share, up from a prior $2.7 billion and negative 15 cents.
When asked about where he anticipates shares of BlackBerry post Q10 launch, Sue appears confident, “We see the stock range bound between $12-$18 and largely driven by sentiment.”
Riding this wave of good news, shares of BlackBerry (NASDAQ: BBRY) are up $0.48 or 3.20% at the time of this post.
Joining Mark Sue is Jefferies & Co.’s Peter Misek who also reiterated a Buy rating on BlackBerry shares, and a $22 price target based off of the initial U.K. sales at Carphone Warehouse and Selfridges department stores that, when “checked” reflected, “initial sell-in was 50+ per store and that this initial stock was quickly sold out.”
We’ve seen in the past how these “checks” can be skewed to reflect whatever the analyst wants it to show, so I will take this with a grain of salt, but this is good news regardless.