Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Reaches New 52-Week High – Still a Buy?

Shares of Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) hit a new 52-week high on Wednesday . The company traded as high as $16.60 and last traded at $15.84, with a volume of 2969025 shares. The stock had previously closed at $15.30.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

BLZE has been the subject of a number of recent analyst reports. Needham & Company LLC raised their target price on Backblaze from $8.50 to $14.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, June 24th. B. Riley Financial increased their price target on shares of Backblaze from $7.00 to $16.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, June 24th. William Blair upgraded shares of Backblaze from an “underperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, June 23rd. Weiss Ratings lowered shares of Backblaze from a “sell (d-)” rating to a “sell (e+)” rating in a research report on Friday, May 15th. Finally, Citizens Jmp increased their target price on shares of Backblaze from $8.00 to $14.00 and gave the company a “market outperform” rating in a report on Wednesday, June 24th. Eight research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has issued a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, Backblaze currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $12.93.

Backblaze Price Performance

The company has a market capitalization of $951.98 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -40.62 and a beta of 1.55. The company’s 50 day simple moving average is $8.99 and its 200-day simple moving average is $5.89. The company has a current ratio of 1.05, a quick ratio of 1.05 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.28.

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 the consensus estimate of $0.02 by $0.02. The business had revenue of $38.67 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $37.78 million. Backblaze had a negative net margin of 14.97% and a negative return on equity of 20.54%. On average, equities research analysts predict that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.37 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Backblaze

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the business. AQR Capital Management LLC purchased a new position in Backblaze during the first quarter worth about $426,000. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. increased its stake in shares of Backblaze by 17.6% during the 1st quarter. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. now owns 27,094 shares of the company’s stock valued at $131,000 after acquiring an additional 4,060 shares during the last quarter. Millennium Management LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Backblaze by 32.5% during the 1st quarter. Millennium Management LLC now owns 825,422 shares of the company’s stock worth $3,987,000 after acquiring an additional 202,609 shares during the period. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. boosted its position in shares of Backblaze by 27.1% in the first quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now owns 261,610 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,264,000 after acquiring an additional 55,720 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its position in shares of Backblaze by 13.5% in the second quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,168,558 shares of the company’s stock worth $6,428,000 after acquiring an additional 139,429 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors 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.