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

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) shares gapped down before the market opened on Monday . The stock had previously closed at $3.64, but opened at $3.56. VNET Group shares last traded at $3.59, with a volume of 115,720 shares changing hands.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of brokerages have commented on VNET. HSBC upgraded VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $5.20 price objective for the company in a research report on Wednesday, October 9th. Hsbc Global Res raised shares of VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 9th. Citigroup initiated coverage on shares of VNET Group in a research note on Wednesday, September 4th. They issued a “buy” rating and a $4.00 target price for the company. Finally, StockNews.com upgraded VNET Group from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 21st. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating, three have assigned a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus target price of $3.97.

VNET Group Price Performance

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.47, a quick ratio of 0.87 and a current ratio of 0.87. The firm has a market capitalization of $900.90 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -1.56, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 7.54 and a beta of -0.30. The company has a 50-day moving average of $3.02 and a 200-day moving average of $2.34.

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, August 27th. The information technology services provider reported $0.06 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.01 by $0.05. The business had revenue of $274.35 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $266.56 million. VNET Group had a negative return on equity of 11.44% and a negative net margin of 34.62%. As a group, research analysts anticipate that VNET Group, Inc. will post 0.02 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Trading of VNET Group

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Blue Trust Inc. raised its holdings in VNET Group by 785.4% in the 3rd quarter. Blue Trust Inc. now owns 42,074 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $172,000 after acquiring an additional 37,322 shares during the period. Creative Planning boosted its stake in VNET Group by 124.1% in the 3rd quarter. Creative Planning now owns 117,139 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $478,000 after purchasing an additional 64,866 shares during the period. Inspire Investing LLC acquired a new position in VNET Group in the 3rd quarter valued at $1,092,000. SG Americas Securities LLC bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the third quarter valued at about $262,000. Finally, Millennium Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of VNET Group by 89.1% during the second quarter. Millennium Management LLC now owns 2,973,358 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $6,229,000 after purchasing an additional 1,400,683 shares during the period. 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.