Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) Short Interest Update

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) was the target of a large increase in short interest in June. As of June 30th, there was short interest totaling 2,754,152 shares, an increase of 83.8% from the June 15th total of 1,498,619 shares. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 8,229,493 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 0.3 days. Approximately 4.8% of the company’s stock are sold short.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

BLZE has been the topic of several research analyst reports. Lake Street Capital lifted their price target on shares of Backblaze from $11.00 to $14.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, June 24th. B. Riley Financial raised their price objective on Backblaze from $7.00 to $16.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, June 24th. Citizens Jmp lifted their target price on Backblaze from $8.00 to $14.00 and gave the stock a “market outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, June 24th. Citigroup reissued an “outperform” rating on shares of Backblaze in a report on Wednesday, June 24th. Finally, Weiss Ratings downgraded Backblaze from a “sell (d-)” rating to a “sell (e+)” rating in a report on Friday, May 15th. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has issued a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $12.93.

Backblaze Stock Performance

Shares of BLZE opened at $13.22 on Friday. The company’s 50 day simple moving average is $10.58 and its 200-day simple moving average is $6.50. The firm has a market cap of $794.52 million, a PE ratio of -33.90 and a beta of 1.55. Backblaze has a 12-month low of $3.26 and a 12-month high of $18.25. 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 released its quarterly earnings results on Monday, May 4th. The company reported $0.04 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.02 by $0.02. The firm had revenue of $38.67 million during 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%. As a group, equities analysts predict that Backblaze will post -0.37 EPS for the current year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Backblaze

Hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Wasatch Advisors LP purchased a new position in shares of Backblaze during the third quarter worth about $17,021,000. Pillsbury Lake Capital LLC acquired a new stake in Backblaze during the 4th quarter worth approximately $8,058,000. Renaissance Technologies LLC lifted its position in Backblaze by 94.5% during the 4th 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 stake in shares of Backblaze by 152.3% in the 1st 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 increased its holdings in shares of Backblaze by 165.9% in the third quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 480,281 shares of the company’s stock valued at $4,457,000 after purchasing an additional 299,672 shares during the period. 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.