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

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET - Get Free Report) shares gapped up before the market opened 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 traded.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several brokerages have recently issued reports on VNET. Citigroup raised their target price 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. Nomura Securities upgraded shares of VNET Group to a "strong-buy" rating in a research report on Friday, February 21st. Finally, StockNews.com cut VNET Group from a "hold" rating to a "sell" rating in a research report on Friday, March 14th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have assigned a buy rating and two have given a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of "Buy" and a consensus price target of $9.30.

VNET Group Trading Up 1.5 %

The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $9.37 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $6.39. 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 firm has a market cap of $1.25 billion, a PE ratio of -2.19, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.15.

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

Hedge Funds Weigh In On VNET Group

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Barclays PLC boosted its stake 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. Point72 Asia Singapore Pte. Ltd. purchased a new position in VNET Group during the fourth quarter valued at $41,000. Catalina Capital Group LLC bought a new stake in VNET Group during the fourth quarter valued at about $54,000. Hsbc Holdings PLC bought a new position in shares of VNET Group in the fourth quarter worth about $66,000. Finally, Tower Research Capital LLC TRC bought a new position in shares of VNET Group during the 4th quarter valued at approximately $80,000. 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.