BLZE heads into its August 7 earnings release as one of the market's sharpest recent movers, up 27% on the week and 14% in Monday's session alone — a setup that demands a convincing follow-through from the numbers.
Options traders are positioned firmly on the bullish side of the ledger. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.22, well below its 20-day average of 0.28, putting it near the lower end of the past year's range and roughly 0.9 standard deviations below the mean. That skew toward calls reflects active demand for upside exposure rather than defensive hedging — a meaningful shift given the stock's 194% year-to-date rally. Short interest, at 4.5% of free float, has climbed about 47% over the past month in share terms, suggesting some market participants are fading the move. But the borrow market tells a different story: availability is extraordinarily loose at over 2,100% of current short interest, meaning shares to borrow are vastly more plentiful than demand — there is no squeeze dynamic at play. Cost to borrow has eased sharply from a mid-July peak near 2.5% to just 0.50%, reinforcing that conviction behind the short thesis remains limited despite the uptick in short positions.
The core debate around Backblaze is straightforward: is the CoreWeave deal a genuine inflection point, or is a $15 stock on a 194% run simply getting ahead of fundamentals that still show negative returns on assets and a price-to-book above nine? The bull case rests on the $335 million multi-year agreement with CoreWeave as proof that Backblaze can compete as strategic AI infrastructure — a market growing at a 25% CAGR — rather than being squeezed between hyperscaler giants and budget object storage alternatives. Analysts have broadly moved in the bulls' direction: multiple firms raised targets in late June following the CoreWeave announcement, with Citizens lifting to $16, B. Riley doubling its target to $16, and Craig-Hallum upgrading from Hold to Buy. Citizens reiterated that move in late July, raising again to $16 — which now sits just above the current price of $15.59 and close to the consensus mean of $15.17. That convergence between price and target means the Street's upside case is already largely priced in. Bears point to ongoing customer churn risk, the need to sustain new customer acquisition at scale, and a valuation that requires sustained growth and a credible path to profitability to justify.
BlackRock is the largest institutional holder with 7.5% of shares, and notably added 823,000 shares through June 30 — a fresh filing that shows the position was built into the CoreWeave-driven rally. The CEO and CFO have been consistent sellers across multiple tranches in 2025 and early 2026 at prices well below current levels, though those trades appear routine in cadence and modest in scale relative to the stock's move.
The August 7 print is therefore less a test of whether Backblaze can win large enterprise deals and more a test of whether the revenue trajectory and unit economics behind the CoreWeave agreement justify a stock that has more than tripled year-to-date.
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