Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) Short Interest Update

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) was the target of a significant increase in short interest during the month of June. As of June 30th, there was short interest totaling 2,754,152 shares, an increase of 83.8% from the June 15th total of 1,498,619 shares. Currently, 4.8% of the company’s shares are sold short. Based on an average trading volume of 8,229,493 shares, the short-interest ratio is presently 0.3 days.

Backblaze Price Performance

NASDAQ:BLZE opened at $13.22 on Friday. The company has a market cap of $794.52 million, a P/E ratio of -33.90 and a beta of 1.55. Backblaze has a 52-week low of $3.26 and a 52-week high of $18.25. The stock’s 50-day simple moving average is $10.58 and its 200 day simple moving average is $6.50. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.28, a quick ratio of 1.05 and a current ratio of 1.05.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last issued its earnings results on Monday, May 4th. The company reported $0.04 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.02 by $0.02. The company had revenue of $38.67 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $37.78 million. Backblaze had a negative net margin of 14.97% and a negative return on equity of 20.54%. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that Backblaze will post -0.37 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of research analysts have issued reports on BLZE shares. B. Riley Financial upped their target price on shares of Backblaze from $7.00 to $16.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, June 24th. Craig Hallum upgraded shares of Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and lifted their price target for the stock from $6.50 to $16.00 in a research report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Lake Street Capital boosted their price target on shares of Backblaze from $11.00 to $14.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, June 24th. Weiss Ratings lowered shares of Backblaze from a “sell (d-)” rating to a “sell (e+)” rating in a report on Friday, May 15th. Finally, Citigroup reaffirmed an “outperform” rating on shares of Backblaze in a research note on Wednesday, June 24th. Eight investment 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’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $12.93.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Backblaze

Several hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. FNY Investment Advisers LLC bought a new stake in Backblaze during the 2nd quarter worth approximately $237,000. Renaissance Technologies LLC raised its stake in shares of Backblaze by 44.6% during the first quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC now owns 1,172,657 shares of the company’s stock valued at $4,046,000 after acquiring an additional 361,905 shares during the last quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership lifted its holdings in shares of Backblaze by 56.0% during the first quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 300,504 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,037,000 after purchasing an additional 107,876 shares during the period. Sei Investments Co. acquired a new position in shares of Backblaze during the first quarter worth $60,000. Finally, State of Wyoming lifted its holdings in shares of Backblaze by 17.8% during the first quarter. State of Wyoming now owns 30,980 shares of the company’s stock worth $107,000 after purchasing an additional 4,679 shares during the period. 54.03% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.