Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Trading Up 14.1% on Analyst Upgrade

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) shares rose 14.1% on Thursday 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 $13.69 and last traded at $13.6530. 4,064,718 shares changed hands during trading, an increase of 136% from the average session volume of 1,725,462 shares. The stock had previously closed at $11.97.

Several other research firms have also commented on BLZE. Lake Street Capital increased their price objective on shares of Backblaze from $11.00 to $14.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday. Craig Hallum upgraded 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 research note on Tuesday. Citigroup restated an “outperform” rating on shares of Backblaze in a research note on Wednesday. Oppenheimer decreased their price target on Backblaze from $9.50 to $8.50 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, February 24th. Finally, William Blair upgraded Backblaze from an “underperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a report on Tuesday. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has given 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.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Backblaze

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

Backblaze Stock Up 13.9%

The firm has a market capitalization of $819.52 million, a P/E ratio of -34.96 and a beta of 1.72. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.28, a quick ratio of 1.05 and a current ratio of 1.05. The stock has a 50 day moving average of $6.96 and a 200-day moving average of $5.23.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last issued its earnings results 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. The firm had revenue of $38.67 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $37.78 million. Backblaze had a negative net margin of 14.97% and a negative return on equity of 20.54%. Research analysts predict that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.33 earnings per share for the current fiscal 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.