Gleb Budman Sells 12,855 Shares of Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) Stock

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) CEO Gleb Budman sold 12,855 shares of the stock in a transaction on Friday, August 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $15.82, for a total transaction of $203,366.10. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 2,192,103 shares in the company, valued at approximately $34,679,069.46. This represents a 0.58% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards.

Backblaze Trading Down 1.6%

Backblaze stock traded down $0.25 during mid-day trading on Monday, hitting $15.55. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 3,460,072 shares, compared to its average volume of 2,179,476. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34, a current ratio of 1.00 and a quick ratio of 1.00. The stock has a market cap of $962.54 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -45.73 and a beta of 1.56. The business has a 50 day moving average price of $14.76 and a 200-day moving average price of $8.48. Backblaze, Inc. has a 12 month low of $3.26 and a 12 month high of $23.99.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Monday, August 3rd. The company reported $0.08 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.02 by $0.06. The firm had revenue of $42.71 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $39.94 million. Backblaze had a negative return on equity of 16.73% and a negative net margin of 13.07%. As a group, analysts forecast that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.26 EPS for the current year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Backblaze

A number of large investors have recently modified their holdings of BLZE. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP boosted its holdings in shares of Backblaze by 152.3% during the 1st quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 517,586 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,785,000 after buying an additional 312,459 shares in the last quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC boosted its stake in Backblaze by 44.6% during the first quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC now owns 1,172,657 shares of the company’s stock worth $4,046,000 after acquiring an additional 361,905 shares in the last quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership boosted its stake in Backblaze by 56.0% during the first quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 300,504 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,037,000 after acquiring an additional 107,876 shares in the last quarter. Baader Bank Aktiengesellschaft purchased a new stake in Backblaze in the fourth quarter worth about $699,000. Finally, GSA Capital Partners LLP increased its stake in shares of Backblaze by 159.7% during the fourth quarter. GSA Capital Partners LLP now owns 299,218 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,394,000 after purchasing an additional 184,015 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 54.03% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of equities analysts have commented on the company. Citigroup reaffirmed a “market outperform” rating on shares of Backblaze in a research note on Thursday, July 23rd. Wall Street Zen raised shares of Backblaze from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Saturday, August 8th. Weiss Ratings reissued a “sell (e+)” rating on shares of Backblaze in a report on Wednesday, August 12th. Needham & Company LLC boosted their price objective on shares of Backblaze from $14.00 to $23.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 4th. Finally, Citizens Jmp upped their price target on Backblaze from $16.00 to $21.00 and gave the company a “market outperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 4th. Eight investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has assigned a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $19.71.

Backblaze Company Profile

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.