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 $4.74, but opened at $4.93. VNET Group shares last traded at $5.12, with a volume of 1,726,406 shares changing hands.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several analysts have commented on VNET shares. StockNews.com cut VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Friday, March 14th. Citigroup lifted their price objective on shares of VNET Group from $16.10 to $20.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, March 14th. Finally, Nomura Securities upgraded shares of VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Friday, February 21st. One equities 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. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Buy” and an average price target of $9.30.

VNET Group Stock Up 6.4 %

The firm has a fifty day moving average of $9.70 and a 200-day moving average of $6.34. The company has a quick ratio of 0.83, a current ratio of 0.83 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.46. The firm has a market cap of $1.30 billion, a P/E ratio of -2.27, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.15.

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, March 12th. The information technology services provider reported ($0.01) earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.03 by ($0.04). VNET Group had a negative return on equity of 5.68% and a negative net margin of 28.54%. The business had revenue of $307.75 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $284.88 million. On average, equities research analysts anticipate that VNET Group, Inc. will post -0.06 earnings per share for the current year.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the business. Barclays PLC boosted its stake in 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 purchasing an additional 4,939 shares during the period. Point72 Asia Singapore Pte. Ltd. bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group during the 4th quarter valued at about $41,000. Wolverine Trading LLC bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group during the 3rd quarter valued at $46,000. Catalina Capital Group LLC purchased a new stake in VNET Group during the 4th quarter valued at about $54,000. Finally, Hsbc Holdings PLC bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the 4th quarter worth $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.