VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Shares Gap Down Following Weak Earnings

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) shares gapped down prior to trading on Wednesday following a dissappointing earnings announcement. The stock had previously closed at $6.04, but opened at $5.62. VNET Group shares last traded at $5.64, with a volume of 2,552,246 shares.

The information technology services provider reported ($0.12) earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.01) by ($0.11). VNET Group had a negative net margin of 28.54% and a negative return on equity of 5.68%. The company had revenue of $309.52 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.22 billion. During the same period last year, the company earned ($0.28) EPS.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities analysts recently issued reports on the company. Wall Street Zen lowered VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report on Tuesday, May 6th. Citigroup upped their price target on shares of VNET Group from $16.10 to $20.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, March 14th. Finally, Nomura Securities raised shares of VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Friday, February 21st. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have assigned a buy rating and two have assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus target price of $9.30.

Institutional Trading of VNET Group

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in VNET. Quantbot Technologies LP bought a new position in VNET Group in the first quarter valued at $36,000. Summit Securities Group LLC acquired a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the 1st quarter valued at approximately $40,000. Barclays PLC increased its holdings 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 worth $34,000 after acquiring an additional 4,939 shares during the last quarter. Headlands Technologies LLC lifted its stake in shares of VNET Group by 5.7% during the 4th quarter. Headlands Technologies LLC now owns 144,499 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $685,000 after buying an additional 7,737 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Invesco Ltd. boosted its holdings in shares of VNET Group by 7.1% during the 1st quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 119,104 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $977,000 after buying an additional 7,881 shares during the period. 72.83% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

VNET Group Stock Performance

The firm has a market cap of $1.47 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -2.46, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.14. 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 stock’s 50 day moving average is $6.28 and its 200 day moving average is $6.82.

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.