Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Shares Down 7.2% – Here’s Why

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE)’s stock price traded down 7.2% during mid-day trading on Monday . The company traded as low as $15.91 and last traded at $16.3410. Approximately 614,533 shares changed hands during mid-day trading, a decline of 68% from the average session volume of 1,936,937 shares. The stock had previously closed at $17.60.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of brokerages recently weighed in on BLZE. Wall Street Zen cut Backblaze from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Saturday, June 27th. Lake Street Capital lifted their target price on Backblaze from $11.00 to $14.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, June 24th. Craig Hallum upgraded shares of Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and boosted their target price for the stock from $6.50 to $16.00 in a report on Tuesday, June 23rd. B. Riley Financial boosted their target price on shares of Backblaze from $7.00 to $16.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, June 24th. Finally, Needham & Company LLC increased their price target on shares of Backblaze from $8.50 to $14.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, June 24th. Eight research 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, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $12.93.

Backblaze Stock Performance

The business has a 50-day moving average price of $9.78 and a 200-day moving average price of $6.15. 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 market capitalization of $1.01 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -42.92 and a beta of 1.55.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Monday, May 4th. The company reported $0.04 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates 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 firm had revenue of $38.67 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $37.78 million. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.37 earnings per share for the current year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Backblaze

Several institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in BLZE. Royal Bank of Canada grew its stake in shares of Backblaze by 1,388.2% during the fourth quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 5,551 shares of the company’s stock worth $26,000 after acquiring an additional 5,178 shares during the last quarter. ProShare Advisors LLC acquired a new position in shares of Backblaze during the fourth quarter valued at about $47,000. Oxford Asset Management LLP purchased a new position in shares of Backblaze in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $47,000. M&T Bank Corp purchased a new position in shares of Backblaze in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $49,000. Finally, Occudo Quantitative Strategies LP purchased a new position in shares of Backblaze in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $58,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 54.03% of the company’s stock.

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.