Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) Receives Average Recommendation of “Moderate Buy” from Analysts

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) has been assigned a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” from the ten analysts that are presently covering the stock, MarketBeat.com reports. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell recommendation, one has assigned a hold recommendation and eight have given a buy recommendation to the company. The average 1 year target price among brokerages that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $19.7143.

A number of research analysts have weighed in on BLZE shares. Needham & Company LLC upped their price objective on shares of Backblaze from $14.00 to $23.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 4th. B. Riley Financial raised their target price on Backblaze from $16.00 to $24.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 4th. Citizens Jmp upped their price target on Backblaze from $16.00 to $21.00 and gave the stock a “market outperform” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 4th. Wall Street Zen upgraded Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Saturday, August 8th. Finally, Lake Street Capital reiterated a “buy” rating and set a $21.00 price target on shares of Backblaze in a research report on Tuesday, August 4th.

Insider Activity

In other news, CEO Gleb Budman sold 12,855 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, August 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $15.82, for a total value of $203,366.10. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 2,192,103 shares in the company, valued at $34,679,069.46. This represents a 0.58% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards. Also, CFO Marc Suidan sold 2,110 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, August 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $15.82, for a total transaction of $33,380.20. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer directly owned 349,518 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,529,374.76. This represents a 0.60% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards. Insiders own 4.20% of the company’s stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Backblaze

A number of institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its holdings in Backblaze by 5.2% in the 3rd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 2,693,508 shares of the company’s stock valued at $24,996,000 after buying an additional 134,034 shares in the last quarter. Wasatch Advisors LP purchased a new position in shares of Backblaze during the 3rd quarter worth $17,021,000. Pillsbury Lake Capital LLC acquired a new position in shares of Backblaze during the 4th quarter valued at about $8,058,000. Whetstone Capital Advisors LLC boosted its position in shares of Backblaze by 4.1% during the 4th quarter. Whetstone Capital Advisors LLC now owns 1,520,055 shares of the company’s stock valued at $7,083,000 after acquiring an additional 59,263 shares during the last quarter. Finally, AWM Investment Company Inc. purchased a new stake in shares of Backblaze in the second quarter valued at about $22,207,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 54.03% of the company’s stock.

Backblaze Trading Up 1.7%

Shares of NASDAQ BLZE opened at $15.24 on Friday. 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 stock has a market capitalization of $943.36 million, a P/E ratio of -44.82 and a beta of 1.56. Backblaze has a 1-year low of $3.26 and a 1-year high of $23.99. The business has a fifty day moving average price of $15.32 and a 200 day moving average price of $8.80.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last released its quarterly earnings results on Monday, August 3rd. The company reported $0.08 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.02 by $0.06. Backblaze had a negative net margin of 13.07% and a negative return on equity of 16.73%. The business had revenue of $42.71 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $39.94 million. Equities research analysts expect that Backblaze will post -0.26 EPS for the current fiscal year.

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.