VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Shares Gap Down – What’s Next?

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET)’s share price gapped down prior to trading on Friday . The stock had previously closed at $9.01, but opened at $8.76. VNET Group shares last traded at $7.88, with a volume of 1,207,585 shares changing hands.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of research analysts have commented on VNET shares. StockNews.com lowered shares of VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research note on Friday, March 14th. Citigroup raised their target price on shares of VNET Group from $16.10 to $20.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, March 14th. UBS Group raised their price objective on shares of VNET Group from $6.40 to $7.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, November 29th. The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded VNET Group from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and boosted their target price for the stock from $3.10 to $5.00 in a research report on Friday, November 29th. Finally, Nomura Securities upgraded VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Friday, February 21st. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have given a buy rating and two have issued a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $9.30.

VNET Group Price Performance

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.46, a quick ratio of 0.83 and a current ratio of 0.83. The company has a 50-day moving average of $9.94 and a 200-day moving average of $6.00. The stock has a market capitalization of $2.12 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -3.73, a P/E/G ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.07.

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, March 12th. The information technology services provider reported ($0.01) EPS for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.03 by ($0.04). The company had revenue of $307.75 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $284.88 million. VNET Group had a negative return on equity of 5.68% and a negative net margin of 28.54%. As a group, equities research analysts expect that VNET Group, Inc. will post -0.06 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of large investors have recently made changes to their positions in VNET. Barclays PLC increased its stake in shares of VNET Group by 229.3% during the 4th quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 7,093 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $34,000 after acquiring an additional 4,939 shares during the last quarter. Point72 Asia Singapore Pte. Ltd. acquired a new position in shares of VNET Group during the fourth quarter worth about $41,000. Wolverine Trading LLC purchased a new position in VNET Group in the 3rd quarter worth approximately $46,000. Catalina Capital Group LLC purchased a new position in shares of VNET Group in the fourth quarter valued at $54,000. Finally, Hsbc Holdings PLC acquired a new stake in VNET Group during the 4th quarter valued at $66,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 72.83% of the company’s stock.

VNET Group Company Profile

VNET Group, Inc, an investment holding company, provides hosting and related services in China. It offers managed hosting services consisting of managed retail services, such as colocation services that dedicate data center space to house customers' servers and networking equipment, as well as allow customers to lease partial or entire cabinets for their servers; interconnectivity services that allow customers to connect their servers; value-added services, including hybrid IT, bare metal, firewall, server load balancing, data backup and recovery, data center management, server management, and backup server services; cloud services that allow customers to run applications over the internet using IT infrastructure; and VPN Services that extend customers' private networks by setting up connections through the public internet.