VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Shares Gap Up – Still a Buy?

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET)’s share price gapped up prior to trading on Thursday . The stock had previously closed at $5.82, but opened at $6.15. VNET Group shares last traded at $5.80, with a volume of 1,560,844 shares trading hands.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research analysts have issued reports on VNET shares. Nomura Securities upgraded VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Friday, February 21st. Wall Street Zen downgraded shares of VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Saturday. Finally, Citigroup boosted their price objective on shares of VNET Group from $16.10 to $20.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, March 14th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have assigned a buy rating and two have issued a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus 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 $5.95 and a 200-day moving average of $6.92. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.59 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -2.66, a P/E/G ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.09.

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, May 28th. The information technology services provider reported ($0.12) earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($0.01) by ($0.11). VNET Group had a negative return on equity of 5.68% and a negative net margin of 28.54%. The company had revenue of $309.52 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $2.22 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted ($0.28) EPS. As a group, equities research analysts expect that VNET Group, Inc. will post -0.06 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Trading of VNET Group

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Asset Management One Co. Ltd. acquired a new stake in shares of VNET Group during the 4th quarter worth about $152,000. Hsbc Holdings PLC acquired a new position in shares of VNET Group in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $66,000. Cetera Investment Advisers purchased a new position in shares of VNET Group during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $102,000. Barclays PLC lifted its stake in shares of VNET Group by 229.3% during the fourth quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 7,093 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $34,000 after buying an additional 4,939 shares during the period. Finally, Norges Bank acquired a new stake in VNET Group during the fourth quarter worth approximately $1,708,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 72.83% of the company’s stock.

About VNET Group

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.