Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Hits New 12-Month High After Analyst Upgrade

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) reached a new 52-week high during trading on Tuesday after B. Riley Financial raised their price target on the stock from $7.00 to $16.00. B. Riley Financial currently has a buy rating on the stock. Backblaze traded as high as $10.95 and last traded at $10.5740, with a volume of 11095188 shares changing hands. The stock had previously closed at $8.12.

Other equities research analysts also recently issued reports about the stock. William Blair upgraded shares of Backblaze from an “underperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research note on Tuesday. Wall Street Zen raised shares of Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Saturday, May 9th. Weiss Ratings lowered shares of Backblaze from a “sell (d-)” rating to a “sell (e+)” rating in a report on Friday, May 15th. Oppenheimer decreased their price target on shares of Backblaze from $9.50 to $8.50 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, February 24th. Finally, Citizens Jmp raised their price objective on Backblaze from $8.00 to $14.00 and gave the company a “market outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has assigned a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $12.93.

Backblaze News Roundup

Here are the key news stories impacting Backblaze this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Backblaze signed a large five-year, $335 million storage agreement with CoreWeave, which could significantly expand revenue and strengthen its position as an AI cloud storage provider. Backblaze Announces Five-Year Multi-Exabyte Data Storage Agreement with CoreWeave
• Positive Sentiment: Multiple analysts turned more bullish after the CoreWeave deal, including price-target hikes from Citizens JMP and Needham to $14, and Craig Hallum upgrading the stock to buy with a $16 target. Analyst price target raises and upgrades for Backblaze
• Positive Sentiment: Trading volume spiked well above normal, and unusual call option activity suggested traders were positioning for more upside after the announcement. Backblaze (BLZE) Soars 43.6%: Is Further Upside Left in the Stock?
• Neutral Sentiment: One market commentary noted that despite the sharp move, further near-term upside may depend on whether earnings estimate revisions continue to improve. Backblaze (BLZE) Soars 43.6%: Is Further Upside Left in the Stock?

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its stake in Backblaze by 5.2% during the 3rd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 2,693,508 shares of the company’s stock worth $24,996,000 after buying an additional 134,034 shares during the period. Wasatch Advisors LP acquired a new position in Backblaze in the 3rd quarter worth $17,021,000. Pillsbury Lake Capital LLC purchased a new position in Backblaze in the 4th quarter valued at about $8,058,000. Whetstone Capital Advisors LLC boosted its position in Backblaze by 4.1% in the 4th quarter. Whetstone Capital Advisors LLC now owns 1,520,055 shares of the company’s stock valued at $7,083,000 after buying an additional 59,263 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC grew its stake in shares of Backblaze by 4.2% during the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,341,863 shares of the company’s stock valued at $6,255,000 after acquiring an additional 53,583 shares in the last quarter. 54.03% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Backblaze Stock Up 2.7%

The company has a market capitalization of $719.40 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -30.69 and a beta of 1.72. The company has a quick ratio of 1.05, a current ratio of 1.05 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.28. The firm has a 50 day moving average price of $6.96 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $5.23.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last released its quarterly earnings results on Monday, May 4th. The company reported $0.04 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.02 by $0.02. The business had revenue of $38.67 million for 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%. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.33 earnings per share 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.