Applied Digital (NASDAQ:APLD – Get Free Report) and Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE – Get Free Report) are both technology companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, valuation, institutional ownership, dividends, risk, analyst recommendations and earnings.
Profitability
This table compares Applied Digital and Backblaze’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.
| Net Margins | Return on Equity | Return on Assets | |
| Applied Digital | -51.28% | -27.31% | -6.07% |
| Backblaze | -13.07% | -16.73% | -7.10% |
Risk & Volatility
Applied Digital has a beta of 5.99, meaning that its stock price is 499% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Backblaze has a beta of 1.56, meaning that its stock price is 56% more volatile than the S&P 500.
Analyst Ratings
| Sell Ratings | Hold Ratings | Buy Ratings | Strong Buy Ratings | Rating Score | |
| Applied Digital | 2 | 2 | 13 | 3 | 2.85 |
| Backblaze | 1 | 1 | 8 | 0 | 2.70 |
Applied Digital presently has a consensus price target of $60.27, suggesting a potential upside of 152.70%. Backblaze has a consensus price target of $19.71, suggesting a potential upside of 51.77%. Given Applied Digital’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities analysts plainly believe Applied Digital is more favorable than Backblaze.
Institutional and Insider Ownership
65.7% of Applied Digital shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 54.0% of Backblaze shares are owned by institutional investors. 9.5% of Applied Digital shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 4.2% of Backblaze shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.
Earnings & Valuation
This table compares Applied Digital and Backblaze”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.
| Gross Revenue | Price/Sales Ratio | Net Income | Earnings Per Share | Price/Earnings Ratio | |
| Applied Digital | $611.31 million | 11.37 | -$244.00 million | ($0.89) | -26.80 |
| Backblaze | $145.84 million | 5.51 | -$25.61 million | ($0.34) | -38.21 |
Backblaze has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Applied Digital. Backblaze is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Applied Digital, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Summary
Applied Digital beats Backblaze on 11 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.
About Applied Digital
Applied Digital Corporation designs, develops, and operates datacenters in North America. Its datacenters provide digital infrastructure solutions to the high-performance computing industry. The company also provides artificial intelligence cloud services, high performance computing datacenter hosting, and crypto datacenter hosting services. The company was formerly known as Applied Blockchain, Inc. and changed its name to Applied Digital Corporation in November 2022. Applied Digital Corporation is based in Dallas, Texas.
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. In addition, the company offers Backblaze Computer Backup that automatically backs up data from laptops and desktops for businesses and individuals, which provides a subscription-based Software-as-a-Service and serves use cases, including computer backup, ransomware protection, theft and loss protection, and remote access. It serves the public cloud IaaS storage and Data-Protection-as-a-Service markets. The company was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California.
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