Insider Selling: Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) CEO Sells $203,366.10 in Stock

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) CEO Gleb Budman sold 12,855 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, August 21st. The shares were 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 owned 2,192,103 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $34,679,069.46. This represents a 0.58% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal 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 Stock Performance

NASDAQ:BLZE opened at $14.98 on Thursday. The stock has a market cap of $927.26 million, a P/E ratio of -44.06 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. The stock’s 50-day moving average is $15.18 and its 200-day moving average is $8.72. Backblaze, Inc. has a 1-year low of $3.26 and a 1-year high of $23.99.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Monday, August 3rd. The company reported $0.08 earnings per share (EPS) 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 business had revenue of $42.71 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $39.94 million. Equities research analysts anticipate that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.26 earnings per share for the current year.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

BLZE has been the subject of several analyst reports. Oppenheimer raised their target price on Backblaze from $15.00 to $25.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 4th. Weiss Ratings reiterated a “sell (e+)” rating on shares of Backblaze in a research report on Wednesday, August 12th. Citizens Jmp increased their price target on Backblaze from $16.00 to $21.00 and gave the company a “market outperform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 4th. Craig Hallum upgraded Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their price objective for the stock from $6.50 to $16.00 in a research report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Finally, Wall Street Zen raised Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Saturday, August 8th. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has issued a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $19.71.

Institutional Trading of Backblaze

A number of institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the company. California State Teachers Retirement System raised its position in shares of Backblaze by 319.2% in the 2nd quarter. California State Teachers Retirement System now owns 12,514 shares of the company’s stock worth $198,000 after acquiring an additional 9,529 shares in the last quarter. AXQ Capital LP acquired a new position in shares of Backblaze in the 2nd quarter valued at about $314,000. AWM Investment Company Inc. bought a new stake in shares of Backblaze during the 2nd quarter valued at about $22,207,000. Globeflex Capital L P bought a new stake in shares of Backblaze during the 2nd quarter valued at about $323,000. Finally, Bank of New York Mellon Corp acquired a new stake in Backblaze during the second quarter worth approximately $3,074,000. 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.