Renaissance Technologies LLC Boosts Holdings in Backblaze, Inc. $BLZE

Key Points

• Renaissance Technologies increased its Backblaze stake by 44.6% in the first quarter to 1.17 million shares, worth about $4.05 million. Institutional investors collectively own 54.03% of the company.
• Analyst sentiment is bullish, with a consensus “Moderate Buy” rating and an average price target of $19.71; Oppenheimer recently raised its target to $25.
• Backblaze shares opened at $18.82, near their 12-month high, after the company exceeded quarterly expectations with earnings of $0.08 per share versus a $0.02 consensus and revenue of $42.71 million.

Renaissance Technologies LLC lifted its holdings in Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLZE - Free Report) by 44.6% in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The fund owned 1,172,657 shares of the company's stock after acquiring an additional 361,905 shares during the quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC owned 1.95% of Backblaze worth $4,046,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its position in Backblaze by 5.2% in the 3rd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 2,693,508 shares of the company's stock worth $24,996,000 after purchasing an additional 134,034 shares during the period. Wasatch Advisors LP purchased a new stake in Backblaze during the third quarter valued at about $17,021,000. Pillsbury Lake Capital LLC bought a new position in shares of Backblaze during the fourth quarter valued at about $8,058,000. Whetstone Capital Advisors LLC grew its stake in shares of Backblaze by 4.1% during the fourth quarter. Whetstone Capital Advisors LLC now owns 1,520,055 shares of the company's stock valued at $7,083,000 after buying an additional 59,263 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of Backblaze by 4.2% in the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,341,863 shares of the company's stock worth $6,255,000 after buying an additional 53,583 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 54.03% of the company's stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

BLZE has been the subject of a number of recent research reports. Oppenheimer boosted their target price on Backblaze from $15.00 to $25.00 and gave the company an "outperform" rating in a research note on Tuesday. Citigroup reaffirmed a "market outperform" rating on shares of Backblaze in a research note on Thursday, July 23rd. William Blair upgraded Backblaze from an "underperform" rating to a "market perform" rating in a research report on Tuesday, June 23rd. Citizens Jmp increased their price objective on Backblaze from $16.00 to $21.00 and gave the company a "market outperform" rating in a research note on Tuesday. Finally, Lake Street Capital restated a "buy" rating and issued a $21.00 target price on shares of Backblaze in a report on Tuesday. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, one has assigned a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company's stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Backblaze presently has a consensus rating of "Moderate Buy" and an average target price of $19.71.

Backblaze Stock Up 3.9%

Shares of Backblaze stock opened at $18.82 on Friday. The company has a current ratio of 1.00, a quick ratio of 1.05 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34. The company's fifty day simple moving average is $12.68 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $7.50. The company has a market cap of $1.16 billion, a P/E ratio of -55.35 and a beta of 1.56. Backblaze, Inc. has a 12-month low of $3.26 and a 12-month high of $23.99.

Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE - Get Free Report) last posted its earnings results on Monday, August 3rd. The company reported $0.08 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.02 by $0.06. Backblaze had a negative net margin of 13.07% and a negative return on equity of 16.73%. The firm had revenue of $42.71 million during the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of $39.94 million. Research analysts anticipate that Backblaze, Inc. will post -0.37 EPS for the current year.

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.

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