Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE) Short Interest Down 23.8% in April

Key Points

• Short interest fell 23.8% in April to 1,391,837 shares as of April 15, implying a days-to-cover of 2.7 and about 2.4% of shares sold short.
• Analysts give Backblaze a consensus rating of "Moderate Buy" with a consensus target price of $7.21; the breakdown is 1 Strong Buy, 6 Buy, 1 Hold and 2 Sell.
• Shares opened at $4.29, trade between a 12‑month low of $3.26 and high of $10.86, and the company has a market cap of $257.8M with a negative P/E of -9.33.

Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE - Get Free Report) was the target of a large drop in short interest in April. As of April 15th, there was short interest totaling 1,391,837 shares, a drop of 23.8% from the March 31st total of 1,826,647 shares. Based on an average daily volume of 513,665 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is currently 2.7 days. Approximately 2.4% of the company's stock are sold short.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of brokerages have recently weighed in on BLZE. Lake Street Capital restated a "buy" rating on shares of Backblaze in a report on Tuesday, February 24th. Citigroup restated a "market outperform" rating on shares of Backblaze in a report on Tuesday, February 24th. Craig Hallum lowered shares of Backblaze from a "buy" rating to a "hold" rating and set a $4.50 price objective on the stock. in a report on Tuesday, February 24th. B. Riley Financial upgraded shares of Backblaze to a "strong-buy" rating in a report on Thursday, April 2nd. Finally, Loop Capital set a $8.00 price objective on shares of Backblaze in a report on Tuesday, February 24th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, six have given a Buy rating, one has given a Hold rating and two have issued a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of "Moderate Buy" and a consensus target price of $7.21.

Backblaze Price Performance

Shares of BLZE opened at $4.29 on Wednesday. The firm's fifty day simple moving average is $3.81 and its 200-day simple moving average is $5.06. Backblaze has a twelve month low of $3.26 and a twelve month high of $10.86. The company has a current ratio of 1.07, a quick ratio of 1.07 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.26. The firm has a market capitalization of $257.83 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -9.33 and a beta of 1.30.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Backblaze

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Global Retirement Partners LLC acquired a new stake in Backblaze during the 3rd quarter worth $47,000. Royal Bank of Canada raised its stake in Backblaze by 1,388.2% during the 4th quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 5,551 shares of the company's stock worth $26,000 after acquiring an additional 5,178 shares in the last quarter. ProShare Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in Backblaze during the 4th quarter worth $47,000. Oxford Asset Management LLP acquired a new stake in Backblaze during the 4th quarter worth $47,000. Finally, AXQ Capital LP acquired a new stake in Backblaze during the 3rd quarter worth $96,000. 54.03% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.

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