Lazard Asset Management LLC Sells 137,818 Shares of Backblaze, Inc. $BLZE

Lazard Asset Management LLC decreased its position in shares of Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) by 46.2% during the 1st quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The institutional investor owned 160,333 shares of the company’s stock after selling 137,818 shares during the quarter. Lazard Asset Management LLC’s holdings in Backblaze were worth $553,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

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

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several research firms have weighed in on BLZE. Wall Street Zen cut Backblaze from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Saturday, June 27th. Needham & Company LLC lifted their price target on Backblaze from $14.00 to $23.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday. Craig Hallum raised Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and boosted their price target for the stock from $6.50 to $16.00 in a report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Citizens Jmp upped their price objective on Backblaze from $16.00 to $21.00 and gave the stock a “market outperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday. Finally, Lake Street Capital reaffirmed a “buy” rating and issued a $21.00 price objective on shares of Backblaze in a research note on Tuesday. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has given a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, Backblaze has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $19.71.

Backblaze Price Performance

BLZE stock opened at $18.11 on Friday. The stock has a market cap of $1.09 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -53.26 and a beta of 1.56. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34, a current ratio of 1.00 and a quick ratio of 1.05. The company has a 50 day simple moving average of $12.46 and a 200 day simple moving average of $7.42. Backblaze, Inc. has a 1 year low of $3.26 and a 1 year high of $23.99.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last posted its earnings results on Monday, August 3rd. The company reported $0.08 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.02 by $0.06. The firm had revenue of $42.71 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $39.94 million. Backblaze had a negative net margin of 13.07% and a negative return on equity of 16.73%. Research analysts anticipate that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.37 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Backblaze Company Profile

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.