Head-To-Head Analysis: Applied Digital (NASDAQ:APLD) vs. Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE)

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) and Applied Digital (NASDAQ:APLD) are both technology companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, valuation, profitability, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, risk and dividends.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Backblaze and Applied Digital, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Backblaze	1	1	8	0	2.70
Applied Digital	2	2	13	3	2.85

Backblaze presently has a consensus target price of $19.71, indicating a potential upside of 42.86%. Applied Digital has a consensus target price of $60.88, indicating a potential upside of 140.27%. Given Applied Digital’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Applied Digital is more favorable than Backblaze.

Volatility and Risk

Backblaze has a beta of 1.56, meaning that its share price is 56% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Applied Digital has a beta of 5.99, meaning that its share price is 499% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Backblaze and Applied Digital”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Backblaze	$145.84 million	5.86	-$25.61 million	($0.34)	-40.59
Applied Digital	$611.31 million	12.08	-$244.00 million	($0.89)	-28.47

Backblaze has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Applied Digital. Backblaze is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Applied Digital, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Backblaze and Applied Digital’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Backblaze	-13.07%	-16.73%	-7.10%
Applied Digital	-37.78%	-16.42%	-4.00%

Insider & Institutional Ownership

54.0% of Backblaze shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 65.7% of Applied Digital shares are held by institutional investors. 4.2% of Backblaze shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 9.5% of Applied Digital shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Applied Digital beats Backblaze on 12 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

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. In addition, the company offers Backblaze Computer Backup that automatically backs up data from laptops and desktops for businesses and individuals, which provides a subscription-based Software-as-a-Service and serves use cases, including computer backup, ransomware protection, theft and loss protection, and remote access. It serves the public cloud IaaS storage and Data-Protection-as-a-Service markets. The company was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California.

About Applied Digital

Applied Digital Corporation designs, develops, and operates datacenters in North America. Its datacenters provide digital infrastructure solutions to the high-performance computing industry. The company also provides artificial intelligence cloud services, high performance computing datacenter hosting, and crypto datacenter hosting services. The company was formerly known as Applied Blockchain, Inc. and changed its name to Applied Digital Corporation in November 2022. Applied Digital Corporation is based in Dallas, Texas.