Backblaze Sees Unusually Large Options Volume (NASDAQ:BLZE)

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) was the recipient of unusually large options trading on Tuesday. Stock traders purchased 8,769 call options on the company. This represents an increase of approximately 1,548% compared to the typical volume of 532 call options.

Analyst Ratings Changes

BLZE has been the topic of a number of research reports. Oppenheimer cut their price target on Backblaze from $9.50 to $8.50 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday, February 24th. Loop Capital set a $8.00 target price on Backblaze in a research report on Tuesday, February 24th. Needham & Company LLC boosted their target price on Backblaze from $6.00 to $8.50 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, May 5th. William Blair reaffirmed an “underperform” rating on shares of Backblaze in a research report on Monday, March 23rd. Finally, Wall Street Zen raised shares of Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Saturday, May 9th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, six have given a Buy rating, one has assigned a Hold rating and two have given a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Backblaze presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $8.00.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Backblaze

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. AQR Capital Management LLC acquired a new position in Backblaze during the first quarter worth $426,000. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. raised its position in Backblaze by 17.6% during the first quarter. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. now owns 27,094 shares of the company’s stock worth $131,000 after acquiring an additional 4,060 shares in the last quarter. Millennium Management LLC lifted its stake in Backblaze by 32.5% in the first quarter. Millennium Management LLC now owns 825,422 shares of the company’s stock valued at $3,987,000 after acquiring an additional 202,609 shares during the last quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. lifted its stake in Backblaze by 27.1% in the first quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now owns 261,610 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,264,000 after acquiring an additional 55,720 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC grew its position in shares of Backblaze by 13.5% in the 2nd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,168,558 shares of the company’s stock valued at $6,428,000 after acquiring an additional 139,429 shares during the period. 54.03% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Backblaze Stock Up 21.4%

Shares of NASDAQ BLZE traded up $1.74 during mid-day trading on Tuesday, hitting $9.86. The company had a trading volume of 14,777,237 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,435,380. Backblaze has a one year low of $3.26 and a one year high of $10.95. The company has a market capitalization of $592.65 million, a PE ratio of -25.45 and a beta of 1.71. The company has a current ratio of 1.05, a quick ratio of 1.05 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.28. The firm has a 50-day simple moving average of $6.63 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $5.13.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Monday, May 4th. The company reported $0.04 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.02 by $0.02. The firm had revenue of $38.67 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $37.78 million. Backblaze had a negative return on equity of 20.54% and a negative net margin of 14.97%. On average, equities analysts expect that Backblaze will post -0.33 EPS for the current year.

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.