Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Shares Gap Down – Here’s Why

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) gapped down before the market opened on Wednesday . The stock had previously closed at $19.20, but opened at $16.75. Backblaze shares last traded at $16.5090, with a volume of 824,621 shares.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of research analysts have recently commented on BLZE shares. Citizens Jmp increased their price objective on Backblaze from $16.00 to $21.00 and gave the company a “market outperform” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 4th. B. Riley Financial raised their price target on Backblaze from $16.00 to $24.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 4th. William Blair raised shares of Backblaze from an “underperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Weiss Ratings reiterated a “sell (e+)” rating on shares of Backblaze in a report on Wednesday, August 12th. Finally, Craig Hallum raised Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and increased their target price for the company from $6.50 to $16.00 in a research note on Tuesday, June 23rd. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has assigned a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Backblaze presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $19.71.

Backblaze Price Performance

The company has a market capitalization of $1.05 billion, a P/E ratio of -50.00 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 company has a 50 day moving average price of $14.24 and a 200 day moving average price of $8.23.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last posted its 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. The company had revenue of $42.71 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate 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 analysts predict that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.26 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Trading of Backblaze

Several large investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Royal Bank of Canada lifted its holdings in shares of Backblaze by 1,388.2% in the fourth quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 5,551 shares of the company’s stock worth $26,000 after acquiring an additional 5,178 shares during the last quarter. ProShare Advisors LLC acquired a new position in shares of Backblaze during the fourth quarter worth $47,000. Oxford Asset Management LLP acquired a new stake in shares of Backblaze in the fourth quarter valued at about $47,000. M&T Bank Corp acquired a new position in shares of Backblaze in the 4th quarter worth approximately $49,000. Finally, Occudo Quantitative Strategies LP acquired a new position in shares of Backblaze in the 2nd quarter valued at about $58,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 54.03% of the company’s stock.

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.