Backblaze Sees Unusually Large Options Volume (NASDAQ:BLZE)

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) was the target of some unusual options trading activity on Tuesday. Investors acquired 8,769 call options on the stock. This represents an increase of 1,548% compared to the average volume of 532 call options.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of research firms have commented on BLZE. Loop Capital set a $8.00 target price on shares of Backblaze in a report on Tuesday, February 24th. Citizens Jmp reissued a “market outperform” rating and issued a $8.00 price target on shares of Backblaze in a research note on Tuesday, May 5th. B. Riley Financial upgraded Backblaze to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, April 2nd. Lake Street Capital upped their price objective on Backblaze from $8.00 to $11.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, May 5th. Finally, Craig Hallum downgraded Backblaze from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating and set a $4.50 price objective for the company. in a report on Tuesday, February 24th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, six have given a Buy rating, one has given a Hold rating and two have given a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $8.00.

Backblaze Trading Up 21.4%

Shares of BLZE stock traded up $1.74 on Tuesday, hitting $9.86. The stock had a trading volume of 14,777,237 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,435,380. The company has a current ratio of 1.05, a quick ratio of 1.05 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.28. Backblaze has a twelve month low of $3.26 and a twelve month high of $10.95. The company has a fifty day moving average price of $6.63 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $5.13. The firm has a market cap of $592.65 million, a P/E ratio of -25.45 and a beta of 1.71.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Monday, May 4th. The company reported $0.04 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.02 by $0.02. Backblaze had a negative return on equity of 20.54% and a negative net margin of 14.97%.The business had revenue of $38.67 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $37.78 million. As a group, analysts forecast that Backblaze will post -0.33 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Backblaze

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of BLZE. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. raised its holdings in Backblaze by 8.2% during the 2nd quarter. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. now owns 29,323 shares of the company’s stock worth $161,000 after buying an additional 2,229 shares during the period. Invesco Ltd. boosted its holdings in shares of Backblaze by 8.3% in the fourth quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 44,103 shares of the company’s stock valued at $206,000 after buying an additional 3,363 shares during the period. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD increased its position in shares of Backblaze by 12.3% during the fourth quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 32,219 shares of the company’s stock worth $151,000 after acquiring an additional 3,523 shares in the last quarter. Cerity Partners LLC increased its position in shares of Backblaze by 3.6% during the second quarter. Cerity Partners LLC now owns 109,001 shares of the company’s stock worth $600,000 after acquiring an additional 3,763 shares in the last quarter. Finally, The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company raised its holdings in shares of Backblaze by 31.8% during the second quarter. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company now owns 19,292 shares of the company’s stock worth $106,000 after acquiring an additional 4,650 shares during the period. 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.