Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Trading Down 4.9% – Here’s What Happened

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE)’s stock price fell 4.9% during trading on Friday . The company traded as low as $19.06 and last traded at $19.4210. 545,902 shares traded hands during trading, a decline of 74% from the average daily volume of 2,077,776 shares. The stock had previously closed at $20.43.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of brokerages have recently issued reports on BLZE. Needham & Company LLC upped their target price on shares of Backblaze from $14.00 to $23.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 4th. Weiss Ratings restated a “sell (e+)” rating on shares of Backblaze in a research report on Wednesday. Citigroup restated a “market outperform” rating on shares of Backblaze in a research report on Thursday, July 23rd. William Blair upgraded Backblaze from an “underperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Finally, Oppenheimer lifted their target price on Backblaze from $15.00 to $25.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 4th. Eight equities research 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, Backblaze currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $19.71.

Backblaze Stock Performance

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34, a current ratio of 1.00 and a quick ratio of 1.00. The firm has a market capitalization of $1.19 billion, a P/E ratio of -56.37 and a beta of 1.56. The stock’s 50 day moving average is $13.54 and its two-hundred day moving average is $7.93.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last announced 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 firm had revenue of $42.71 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $39.94 million. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.26 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Backblaze

Several institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Wasatch Advisors LP acquired a new stake in shares of Backblaze in the 3rd quarter valued at approximately $17,021,000. Pillsbury Lake Capital LLC bought a new stake in Backblaze in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $8,058,000. Renaissance Technologies LLC raised its holdings in Backblaze by 94.5% in the fourth quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC now owns 810,752 shares of the company’s stock worth $3,778,000 after purchasing an additional 393,936 shares during the period. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP raised its holdings in Backblaze by 152.3% in the first quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 517,586 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,785,000 after purchasing an additional 312,459 shares during the period. Finally, Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership boosted its position in shares of Backblaze by 165.9% during the third 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 in the last quarter. 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.