Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Upgraded to Market Perform at William Blair

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) was upgraded by William Blair from an “underperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a report released on Tuesday.

A number of other brokerages have also recently commented on BLZE. Loop Capital set a $8.00 price target on shares of Backblaze in a research note on Tuesday, February 24th. B. Riley Financial upgraded Backblaze to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Thursday, April 2nd. Wall Street Zen raised Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday, May 9th. Lake Street Capital raised their target price on Backblaze from $8.00 to $11.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, May 5th. Finally, Citizens Jmp reaffirmed a “market outperform” rating and issued a $8.00 price target on shares of Backblaze in a research note on Tuesday, May 5th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, seven have issued a Buy rating, one has assigned a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $9.64.

Backblaze Stock Performance

BLZE traded up $3.53 during trading on Tuesday, reaching $11.65. 30,211,155 shares of the company’s stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 1,572,151. Backblaze has a fifty-two week low of $3.26 and a fifty-two week high of $11.82. 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 business has a 50 day moving average price of $6.63 and a 200 day moving average price of $5.13. The company has a market capitalization of $700.16 million, a P/E ratio of -29.87 and a beta of 1.71.

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

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Backblaze

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the business. JPMorgan Chase & Co. grew its stake in shares of Backblaze by 95.9% during the third quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 351,657 shares of the company’s stock valued at $3,263,000 after purchasing an additional 172,165 shares during the last quarter. Baader Bank Aktiengesellschaft acquired a new position in Backblaze during the 4th quarter worth $699,000. Shannon River Fund Management LLC acquired a new position in Backblaze during the 3rd quarter worth $2,129,000. GSA Capital Partners LLP boosted its position in Backblaze by 159.7% in the 4th quarter. GSA Capital Partners LLP now owns 299,218 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,394,000 after buying an additional 184,015 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Nano Cap New Millennium Growth Fund L P bought a new position in Backblaze in the 4th quarter valued at $1,165,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 54.03% of the company’s stock.

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.