Comparing Backblaze (BLZE) and Its Peers

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) is one of 272 publicly-traded companies in the “IT Services” industry, but how does it weigh in compared to its rivals? We will compare Backblaze to similar companies based on the strength of its analyst recommendations, dividends, valuation, risk, earnings, profitability and institutional ownership.

Profitability

This table compares Backblaze and its rivals’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Backblaze	-13.07%	-16.73%	-7.10%
Backblaze Competitors	-191.25%	-32.07%	-8.67%

Risk & Volatility

Backblaze has a beta of 1.64, indicating that its share price is 64% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Backblaze’s rivals have a beta of 2.15, indicating that their average share price is 115% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

54.0% of Backblaze shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 36.7% of shares of all “IT Services” companies are owned by institutional investors. 4.2% of Backblaze shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 20.5% of shares of all “IT Services” companies are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and recommmendations for Backblaze and its rivals, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Backblaze	1	1	8	0	2.70
Backblaze Competitors	1984	5637	9416	346	2.47

Backblaze presently has a consensus price target of $19.71, indicating a potential upside of 159.74%. As a group, “IT Services” companies have a potential upside of 23.53%. Given Backblaze’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, research analysts clearly believe Backblaze is more favorable than its rivals.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Backblaze and its rivals revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Backblaze	$145.84 million	-$25.61 million	-22.32
Backblaze Competitors	$3.33 billion	$227.67 million	-31.90

Backblaze’s rivals have higher revenue and earnings than Backblaze. Backblaze is trading at a higher price-to-earnings ratio than its rivals, indicating that it is currently more expensive than other companies in its industry.

Summary

Backblaze beats its rivals on 8 of the 13 factors compared.

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. In addition, the company offers Backblaze Computer Backup that automatically backs up data from laptops and desktops for businesses and individuals, which provides a subscription-based Software-as-a-Service and serves use cases, including computer backup, ransomware protection, theft and loss protection, and remote access. It serves the public cloud IaaS storage and Data-Protection-as-a-Service markets. The company was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California.