Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Stock Price Down 7.8% – Time to Sell?

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE)’s share price was down 7.8% during mid-day trading on Friday . The stock traded as low as $11.77 and last traded at $11.7660. Approximately 845,765 shares traded hands during mid-day trading, a decline of 57% from the average daily volume of 1,945,642 shares. The stock had previously closed at $12.76.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of equities research analysts have recently issued reports on the company. Citigroup reiterated a “market outperform” rating on shares of Backblaze in a research note on Thursday. Weiss Ratings downgraded shares of Backblaze from a “sell (d-)” rating to a “sell (e+)” rating in a research report on Friday, May 15th. B. Riley Financial upped their target price on shares of Backblaze from $7.00 to $16.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, June 24th. Citizens Jmp raised their price target on shares of Backblaze from $14.00 to $16.00 and gave the company a “market outperform” rating in a report on Thursday. Finally, Craig Hallum raised shares of Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and lifted their price target for the stock from $6.50 to $16.00 in a research note on Tuesday, June 23rd. Eight investment 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. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $13.21.

Backblaze Trading Down 9.0%

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 business’s 50 day moving average price is $11.15 and its 200-day moving average price is $6.78. The firm has a market cap of $697.76 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -29.77 and a beta of 1.55.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Monday, May 4th. The company reported $0.04 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.02 by $0.02. The business had revenue of $38.67 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $37.78 million. Backblaze had a negative return on equity of 20.54% and a negative net margin of 14.97%. Equities analysts expect that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.37 EPS for the current year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Backblaze

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Wasatch Advisors LP bought a new position in Backblaze during the third quarter worth $17,021,000. Pillsbury Lake Capital LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Backblaze during the fourth quarter worth $8,058,000. Renaissance Technologies LLC raised its stake in 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 during the period. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP grew its holdings 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 last quarter. Finally, Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership lifted its holdings in shares of Backblaze by 165.9% in the 3rd quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 480,281 shares of the company’s stock worth $4,457,000 after purchasing an additional 299,672 shares during the last quarter. 54.03% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.