Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Sees Strong Trading Volume – What’s Next?

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) saw an uptick in trading volume on Monday . 1,290,140 shares traded hands during mid-day trading, a decline of 37% from the previous session’s volume of 2,058,583 shares.The stock last traded at $20.1630 and had previously closed at $18.82.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities analysts recently commented on BLZE shares. Lake Street Capital restated a “buy” rating and set a $21.00 target price on shares of Backblaze in a research report on Tuesday, August 4th. Craig Hallum raised Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their target price for the stock from $6.50 to $16.00 in a research note on Tuesday, June 23rd. Oppenheimer upped their price objective on shares of Backblaze from $15.00 to $25.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 4th. 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 report on Tuesday, August 4th. Finally, William Blair upgraded shares of Backblaze from an “underperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has issued a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $19.71.

Backblaze Stock Performance

The business’s 50 day moving average is $13.08 and its two-hundred day moving average is $7.72. The company has a market cap of $1.16 billion, a PE ratio of -55.03 and a beta of 1.56. The company has a current ratio of 1.00, a quick ratio of 1.00 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last issued its 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 return on equity of 16.73% and a negative net margin of 13.07%.The firm had revenue of $42.71 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $39.94 million. On average, equities research analysts anticipate that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.26 EPS for the current year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Backblaze

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its stake in Backblaze by 5.2% in the 3rd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 2,693,508 shares of the company’s stock worth $24,996,000 after acquiring an additional 134,034 shares in the last quarter. Wasatch Advisors LP bought a new stake in shares of Backblaze during the third quarter valued at approximately $17,021,000. Pillsbury Lake Capital LLC bought a new position in Backblaze in the fourth quarter worth approximately $8,058,000. Whetstone Capital Advisors LLC grew its stake in Backblaze by 4.1% in the fourth quarter. Whetstone Capital Advisors LLC now owns 1,520,055 shares of the company’s stock worth $7,083,000 after purchasing an additional 59,263 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in Backblaze by 4.2% during the 4th quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,341,863 shares of the company’s stock worth $6,255,000 after purchasing an additional 53,583 shares during the period. 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.