Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) Sees Significant Decline in Short Interest

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) saw a large decrease in short interest in the month of August. As of August 14th, there was short interest totaling 1,787,453 shares, a decrease of 33.7% from the July 30th total of 2,694,870 shares. Currently, 3.0% of the company’s shares are short sold. Based on an average trading volume of 4,057,580 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is presently 0.4 days.

Backblaze Trading Down 3.3%

NASDAQ BLZE traded down $0.46 during trading on Tuesday, hitting $13.67. The company had a trading volume of 1,357,514 shares, compared to its average volume of 2,165,801. The company’s fifty day moving average is $15.57 and its 200-day moving average is $8.94. Backblaze has a one year low of $3.26 and a one year high of $23.99. The company has a current ratio of 1.00, a quick ratio of 1.00 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34. The company has a market cap of $846.17 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -40.20 and a beta of 1.56.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last announced its earnings results on Monday, August 3rd. The company reported $0.08 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates 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 firm had revenue of $42.71 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $39.94 million. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Backblaze will post -0.26 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Activity

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

Institutional Trading of Backblaze

Large investors have recently bought and sold shares of the company. Royal Bank of Canada raised its position in shares of Backblaze by 1,388.2% in 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 in the last quarter. ProShare Advisors LLC bought a new stake in shares of Backblaze during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $47,000. Oxford Asset Management LLP bought a new stake in shares of Backblaze during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $47,000. M&T Bank Corp purchased a new stake in Backblaze in the fourth quarter worth $49,000. Finally, Occudo Quantitative Strategies LP purchased a new stake in Backblaze in the second quarter worth $58,000. 54.03% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several brokerages have recently issued reports on BLZE. William Blair upgraded shares of Backblaze from an “underperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Oppenheimer upped their price target on shares of Backblaze from $15.00 to $25.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 4th. Craig Hallum raised shares of Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and increased their price target for the company from $6.50 to $16.00 in a research report on Tuesday, June 23rd. B. Riley Financial raised their price target on shares of Backblaze from $16.00 to $24.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 4th. Finally, Citizens Jmp boosted their price objective on shares of Backblaze from $16.00 to $21.00 and gave the company a “market outperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 4th. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has assigned a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, Backblaze presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $19.71.

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.