Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Sees Strong Trading Volume – Here’s Why

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) saw unusually-high trading volume on Thursday . 2,544,766 shares changed hands during trading, an increase of 21% from the previous session’s volume of 2,110,377 shares.The stock last traded at $16.3380 and had previously closed at $16.88.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several analysts have commented on BLZE shares. Wall Street Zen upgraded shares of Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Saturday, August 8th. Citizens Jmp increased their price objective on shares of Backblaze from $16.00 to $21.00 and gave the stock a “market outperform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 4th. Citigroup reissued a “market outperform” rating on shares of Backblaze in a report on Thursday, July 23rd. Oppenheimer boosted their target price on shares of Backblaze from $15.00 to $25.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 4th. Finally, William Blair raised shares of Backblaze from an “underperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Eight investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has given a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $19.71.

Backblaze Price Performance

The company has a market capitalization of $978.02 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -46.47 and a beta of 1.56. The stock has a fifty day simple moving average of $14.76 and a 200-day simple moving average of $8.45. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34, a current ratio of 1.00 and a quick ratio of 1.00.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last released its quarterly earnings data on Monday, August 3rd. The company reported $0.08 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.02 by $0.06. The business had revenue of $42.71 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $39.94 million. Backblaze had a negative return on equity of 16.73% and a negative net margin of 13.07%. On average, equities research analysts anticipate that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.26 EPS for the current year.

Institutional Trading of Backblaze

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Royal Bank of Canada increased its holdings in Backblaze by 1,388.2% in the fourth quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 5,551 shares of the company’s stock valued at $26,000 after buying an additional 5,178 shares in the last quarter. ProShare Advisors LLC acquired a new position in shares of Backblaze in the fourth quarter worth about $47,000. Oxford Asset Management LLP purchased a new stake in shares of Backblaze during the 4th quarter worth about $47,000. M&T Bank Corp purchased a new stake in shares of Backblaze during the 4th quarter worth about $49,000. Finally, Occudo Quantitative Strategies LP acquired a new stake in shares of Backblaze during the 2nd quarter valued at about $58,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds 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.