Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) Short Interest Down 11.3% in September

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) saw a large decrease in short interest during the month of September. As of September 15th, there was short interest totalling 1,330,000 shares, a decrease of 11.3% from the August 31st total of 1,500,000 shares. Based on an average daily volume of 379,500 shares, the short-interest ratio is presently 3.5 days. Currently, 4.6% of the company’s stock are short sold.

Insider Transactions at Backblaze

In other Backblaze news, VP Tina Cessna sold 3,894 shares of Backblaze stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, August 23rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $6.45, for a total value of $25,116.30. Following the completion of the sale, the vice president now directly owns 153,440 shares in the company, valued at $989,688. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. In other news, Director Barbara H. Nelson sold 16,000 shares of Backblaze stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, August 16th. The shares were sold at an average price of $6.79, for a total value of $108,640.00. Following the transaction, the director now owns 62,346 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $423,329.34. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, VP Tina Cessna sold 3,894 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Friday, August 23rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $6.45, for a total transaction of $25,116.30. Following the completion of the sale, the vice president now owns 153,440 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $989,688. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 47,483 shares of company stock valued at $311,530 in the last three months. Corporate insiders own 5.20% of the company’s stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Backblaze

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in BLZE. Scalar Gauge Management LLC acquired a new position in Backblaze in the fourth quarter worth about $1,677,000. Virtu Financial LLC bought a new position in shares of Backblaze during the 4th quarter worth approximately $252,000. Checchi Capital Advisers LLC acquired a new stake in Backblaze in the 1st quarter valued at $318,000. Essex Investment Management Co. LLC bought a new stake in Backblaze in the first quarter valued at $2,048,000. Finally, First Eagle Investment Management LLC raised its stake in Backblaze by 10.2% during the first quarter. First Eagle Investment Management LLC now owns 726,990 shares of the company’s stock worth $7,437,000 after acquiring an additional 67,475 shares in the last quarter. 54.03% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of research firms have weighed in on BLZE. Oppenheimer cut their target price on shares of Backblaze from $11.00 to $10.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, August 9th. Craig Hallum boosted their price objective on Backblaze from $9.00 to $10.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, August 9th.

Backblaze Stock Performance

BLZE stock traded up $0.13 during trading on Friday, reaching $6.38. 298,372 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 363,069. Backblaze has a twelve month low of $4.80 and a twelve month high of $12.65. The company has a current ratio of 0.61, a quick ratio of 0.61 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34. The company has a market capitalization of $264.77 million, a P/E ratio of -4.49 and a beta of 1.01. The stock has a 50 day simple moving average of $6.17 and a 200-day simple moving average of $7.29.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, August 8th. The company reported ($0.25) earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($0.12) by ($0.13). The firm had revenue of $31.29 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $30.93 million. Backblaze had a negative return on equity of 104.71% and a negative net margin of 42.34%. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted ($0.38) EPS. As a group, sell-side analysts anticipate that Backblaze will post -0.99 earnings per share for the current year.

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.