Gleb Budman Sells 12,855 Shares of Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Stock

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) CEO Gleb Budman sold 12,855 shares of Backblaze stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, August 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $15.82, for a total transaction of $203,366.10. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 2,192,103 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $34,679,069.46. This trade represents a 0.58% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards.

Backblaze Price Performance

Backblaze stock opened at $15.28 on Wednesday. The firm has a market cap of $945.83 million, a PE ratio of -44.94 and a beta of 1.56. Backblaze, Inc. has a 52-week low of $3.26 and a 52-week high of $23.99. The company has a quick ratio of 1.00, a current ratio of 1.00 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34. The company’s 50 day moving average is $15.05 and its two-hundred day moving average is $8.64.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Monday, August 3rd. The company reported $0.08 EPS for the quarter, beating 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 company had revenue of $42.71 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $39.94 million. On average, research analysts expect that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.26 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several research analysts recently commented on BLZE shares. Citizens Jmp boosted their target price on Backblaze from $16.00 to $21.00 and gave the stock a “market outperform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 4th. Craig Hallum raised 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 boosted their price objective on Backblaze from $16.00 to $24.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 4th. Citigroup restated a “market outperform” rating on shares of Backblaze in a research note on Thursday, July 23rd. Finally, Needham & Company LLC raised their target price on shares of Backblaze from $14.00 to $23.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a 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 assigned a Sell rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $19.71.

Institutional Trading of Backblaze

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of BLZE. Royal Bank of Canada lifted its holdings in 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 buying an additional 5,178 shares during the last quarter. ProShare Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Backblaze during the 4th quarter worth about $47,000. Oxford Asset Management LLP acquired a new stake in shares of Backblaze during the 4th quarter worth about $47,000. M&T Bank Corp purchased a new stake in Backblaze during the fourth quarter worth approximately $49,000. Finally, Occudo Quantitative Strategies LP purchased a new stake in Backblaze during the second quarter worth approximately $58,000. 54.03% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.