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

Shares of Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) saw unusually-strong trading volume on Monday . 1,290,140 shares traded hands during 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.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several brokerages have recently issued reports on BLZE. William Blair raised Backblaze from an “underperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Craig Hallum upgraded Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their price target for the company from $6.50 to $16.00 in a report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Citigroup reaffirmed a “market outperform” rating on shares of Backblaze in a research note on Thursday, July 23rd. B. Riley Financial upped their price objective on Backblaze from $16.00 to $24.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 4th. Finally, Lake Street Capital reiterated a “buy” rating and set a $21.00 target price on shares of Backblaze in a research report on Tuesday, August 4th. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Backblaze currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $19.71.

Backblaze Trading Up 4.4%

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34, a quick ratio of 1.00 and a current ratio of 1.00. The stock’s fifty day moving average is $12.68 and its 200 day moving average is $7.52. The stock has a market cap of $1.22 billion, a P/E ratio of -57.78 and a beta of 1.56.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Monday, August 3rd. The company reported $0.08 earnings per share 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 company had revenue of $42.71 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $39.94 million. As a group, equities research analysts predict that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.37 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Trading of Backblaze

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of BLZE. Wasatch Advisors LP purchased a new position in Backblaze during the third quarter worth $17,021,000. Pillsbury Lake Capital LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Backblaze in the fourth quarter valued at $8,058,000. Renaissance Technologies LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Backblaze by 94.5% in the 4th quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC now owns 810,752 shares of the company’s stock worth $3,778,000 after acquiring an additional 393,936 shares during the last quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP lifted its holdings in shares of Backblaze by 152.3% in the 1st quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 517,586 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,785,000 after acquiring an additional 312,459 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership boosted its stake in shares of Backblaze by 165.9% during the 3rd quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 480,281 shares of the company’s stock worth $4,457,000 after purchasing an additional 299,672 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other 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.