Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Trading Down 9.8% – Time to Sell?

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) traded down 9.8% during mid-day trading on Wednesday . The stock traded as low as $17.75 and last traded at $17.85. Approximately 902,520 shares changed hands during trading, a decline of 55% from the average daily volume of 2,021,267 shares. The stock had previously closed at $19.79.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of research analysts have recently issued reports on BLZE shares. Needham & Company LLC lifted their price target on Backblaze from $14.00 to $23.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday. B. Riley Financial upped their price objective on Backblaze from $16.00 to $24.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday. Craig Hallum raised Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their price objective for the company from $6.50 to $16.00 in a research report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Wall Street Zen lowered Backblaze from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Saturday, June 27th. Finally, Lake Street Capital reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $21.00 target price on shares of Backblaze in a report on Tuesday. 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.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $19.71.

Backblaze Trading Up 1.7%

The firm has a market cap of $1.11 billion, a PE ratio of -54.09 and a beta of 1.56. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34, a current ratio of 1.00 and a quick ratio of 1.05. The stock’s fifty day simple moving average is $12.46 and its 200-day simple moving average is $7.42.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Monday, August 3rd. The company reported $0.08 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.02 by $0.06. Backblaze had a negative return on equity of 16.73% and a negative net margin of 13.07%.The company had revenue of $42.71 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $39.94 million. On average, sell-side analysts forecast that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.37 earnings per share for the current year.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Backblaze

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Royal Bank of Canada lifted its holdings in Backblaze by 1,388.2% in the fourth quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 5,551 shares of the company’s stock valued at $26,000 after acquiring an additional 5,178 shares during the period. ProShare Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in Backblaze in the 4th quarter worth about $47,000. Oxford Asset Management LLP purchased a new stake in Backblaze during the 4th quarter worth approximately $47,000. M&T Bank Corp acquired a new position in shares of Backblaze during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $49,000. Finally, Occudo Quantitative Strategies LP purchased a new position in shares of Backblaze in the second quarter valued at approximately $58,000. 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.