Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Stock Rating Upgraded by Craig Hallum

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) was upgraded by analysts at Craig Hallum from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report issued on Tuesday,Benzinga reports. The firm currently has a $16.00 target price on the stock, up from their prior target price of $6.50. Craig Hallum’s target price would indicate a potential upside of 44.40% from the company’s current price.

BLZE has been the topic of a number of other research reports. Citigroup restated a “market outperform” rating on shares of Backblaze in a research report on Tuesday, February 24th. B. Riley Financial raised Backblaze to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Thursday, April 2nd. Citizens Jmp reissued a “market outperform” rating and set a $8.00 target price on shares of Backblaze in a report on Tuesday, May 5th. Needham & Company LLC increased their price target on Backblaze from $6.00 to $8.50 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, May 5th. Finally, Weiss Ratings downgraded shares of Backblaze from a “sell (d-)” rating to a “sell (e+)” rating in a research note on Friday, May 15th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, seven have given a Buy rating and two have issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $9.64.

Backblaze Stock Up 36.5%

NASDAQ BLZE traded up $2.96 on Tuesday, reaching $11.08. The company had a trading volume of 21,694,359 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,486,045. The company’s fifty day moving average is $6.63 and its 200-day moving average is $5.13. The firm has a market capitalization of $665.91 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -28.19 and a beta of 1.71. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.28, a quick ratio of 1.05 and a current ratio of 1.05. Backblaze has a 1-year low of $3.26 and a 1-year high of $11.11.

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

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Backblaze

Institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Wasatch Advisors LP purchased a new stake in shares of Backblaze during the third quarter worth $17,021,000. Pillsbury Lake Capital LLC bought a new stake in Backblaze during the fourth quarter worth about $8,058,000. Renaissance Technologies LLC raised its stake in shares of Backblaze by 94.5% during the fourth quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC now owns 810,752 shares of the company’s stock worth $3,778,000 after acquiring an additional 393,936 shares in the last quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP boosted its stake in shares of Backblaze by 152.3% during the first quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 517,586 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,785,000 after purchasing an additional 312,459 shares during the period. Finally, Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership raised its stake in shares of Backblaze by 165.9% during the third quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 480,281 shares of the company’s stock valued at $4,457,000 after acquiring an additional 299,672 shares during the last quarter. 54.03% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other 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.