VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Shares Gap Down – Here’s Why

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) 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 trading hands.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities analysts recently issued reports on VNET shares. Nomura Securities upgraded VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Friday, February 21st. StockNews.com cut VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report on Friday, March 14th. Finally, Citigroup raised their target price on VNET Group from $16.10 to $20.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, March 14th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have issued a buy rating and two have assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, VNET Group has an average rating of “Buy” and a consensus target price of $9.30.

VNET Group Stock Performance

The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $10.00 and a 200-day moving average price of $6.06. The company has a current ratio of 0.83, a quick ratio of 0.83 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.46. The firm has a market capitalization of $2.12 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -3.72, a PEG ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.07.

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

Institutional Trading of VNET Group

Several hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of VNET. Barclays PLC boosted its holdings in shares of VNET Group by 229.3% in the 4th quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 7,093 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $34,000 after acquiring an additional 4,939 shares in the last quarter. Point72 Asia Singapore Pte. Ltd. acquired a new position in VNET Group in the fourth quarter worth $41,000. Wolverine Trading LLC bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group during the third quarter worth $46,000. Catalina Capital Group LLC acquired a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the fourth quarter valued at $54,000. Finally, Hsbc Holdings PLC bought a new position in shares of VNET Group in the fourth quarter valued at about $66,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds 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.