Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Shares Gap Down – Should You Sell?

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) shares gapped down prior to trading on Wednesday . The stock had previously closed at $19.20, but opened at $16.75. Backblaze shares last traded at $16.5090, with a volume of 824,621 shares changing hands.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research analysts have issued reports on BLZE shares. Citigroup reiterated a “market outperform” rating on shares of Backblaze in a report on Thursday, July 23rd. Lake Street Capital reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $21.00 target price on shares of Backblaze in a report on Tuesday, August 4th. Oppenheimer upped their target price on Backblaze from $15.00 to $25.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 4th. Craig Hallum raised Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their target price for the company from $6.50 to $16.00 in a research report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Finally, Needham & Company LLC boosted their target price on shares of Backblaze from $14.00 to $23.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 4th. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has assigned a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $19.71.

Backblaze Stock Down 11.3%

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34, a current ratio of 1.00 and a quick ratio of 1.00. The company has a market cap of $1.05 billion, a PE ratio of -50.00 and a beta of 1.56. The company has a fifty day moving average price of $14.24 and a 200 day moving average price of $8.23.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last released its earnings results on Monday, August 3rd. The company reported $0.08 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.02 by $0.06. The business had revenue of $42.71 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $39.94 million. Backblaze had a negative return on equity of 16.73% and a negative net margin of 13.07%. As a group, analysts anticipate that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.26 EPS for the current year.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Backblaze

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Royal Bank of Canada grew its holdings in shares of Backblaze by 1,388.2% during the 4th quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 5,551 shares of the company’s stock worth $26,000 after acquiring an additional 5,178 shares during the period. ProShare Advisors LLC purchased a new position in shares of Backblaze in the fourth quarter worth approximately $47,000. Oxford Asset Management LLP bought a new stake in shares of Backblaze during the 4th quarter valued at $47,000. M&T Bank Corp purchased a new stake in Backblaze in the fourth quarter worth about $49,000. Finally, Occudo Quantitative Strategies LP bought a new position in shares of Backblaze during the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $58,000. Institutional investors own 54.03% of the company’s stock.

About Backblaze

Backblaze, Inc, a storage cloud platform, provides businesses and consumers cloud services to store, use, and protect data in the United States and internationally. The company offers cloud services through a web-scale software infrastructure built on commodity hardware. It also provides Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, which enables customers to store data, developers to build applications, and partners to expand their use cases. This service is offered as a consumption-based Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and serves use cases, such as public, hybrid, and multi-cloud data storage; application development and DevOps; content delivery and edge computing; security and ransomware protection; media management; backup, archive, and tape replacement; repository for analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning; and Internet of Things.