Backblaze’s (BLZE) “Buy” Rating Reiterated at Needham & Company LLC

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE)‘s stock had its “buy” rating reiterated by Needham & Company LLC in a note issued to investors on Thursday, Benzinga reports. They currently have a $23.00 price objective on the stock. Needham & Company LLC’s price objective would suggest a potential upside of 73.85% from the stock’s current price.

Other equities analysts have also issued reports about the stock. William Blair raised shares of Backblaze from an “underperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Wall Street Zen raised Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday, August 8th. B. Riley Financial lifted their price target on Backblaze from $16.00 to $24.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 4th. Lake Street Capital reaffirmed a “buy” rating and issued a $21.00 price objective on shares of Backblaze in a research note on Tuesday, August 4th. Finally, Oppenheimer boosted their price objective on shares of Backblaze from $15.00 to $25.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 4th. Eight investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has issued a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Backblaze presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $19.71.

Backblaze Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ BLZE opened at $13.23 on Thursday. The stock has a market capitalization of $818.94 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -38.91 and a beta of 1.56. Backblaze has a fifty-two week low of $3.26 and a fifty-two week high of $23.99. The business has a 50-day moving average of $15.47 and a 200-day moving average of $9.39. 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 announced its quarterly earnings results on Monday, August 3rd. The company reported $0.08 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.02 by $0.06. Backblaze had a negative return on equity of 16.73% and a negative net margin of 13.07%.The firm had revenue of $42.71 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $39.94 million. As a group, sell-side analysts predict that Backblaze will post -0.26 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity at Backblaze

In other Backblaze news, CEO Gleb Budman sold 12,855 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Friday, August 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $15.82, for a total transaction of $203,366.10. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 2,192,103 shares in the company, valued at approximately $34,679,069.46. This trade represents a 0.58% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards. Also, CFO Marc Suidan sold 2,110 shares of Backblaze stock in a transaction on Friday, August 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $15.82, for a total transaction of $33,380.20. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer directly owned 349,518 shares in the company, valued at $5,529,374.76. This represents a 0.60% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards. 4.20% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Backblaze

A number of hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Wasatch Advisors LP purchased a new position in shares of Backblaze in the third quarter valued at $17,021,000. Pillsbury Lake Capital LLC bought a new position in Backblaze in the 4th quarter valued at $8,058,000. AWM Investment Company Inc. purchased a new position in shares of Backblaze during the 2nd quarter valued at $22,207,000. Renaissance Technologies LLC grew its position in shares of Backblaze by 94.5% during the 4th quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC now owns 810,752 shares of the company’s stock valued at $3,778,000 after purchasing an additional 393,936 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Dimensional Fund Advisors LP increased its holdings in shares of 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. 54.03% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

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.