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

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) gapped up prior to trading on Thursday . The stock had previously closed at $3.76, but opened at $4.05. VNET Group shares last traded at $4.10, with a volume of 1,009,832 shares traded.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities analysts recently weighed in on VNET shares. Hsbc Global Res raised shares of VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 9th. Citigroup assumed coverage on shares of VNET Group in a report on Wednesday, September 4th. They set a “buy” rating and a $4.00 price objective for the company. StockNews.com raised shares of VNET Group from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 21st. Finally, HSBC raised shares of VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $5.20 price objective on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, October 9th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating, three have issued a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of “Buy” and a consensus target price of $3.97.

VNET Group Stock Up 13.6 %

The stock has a market capitalization of $1.10 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -1.78, a PEG ratio of 7.67 and a beta of -0.27. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.47, a current ratio of 0.87 and a quick ratio of 0.87. The business has a fifty day moving average of $3.57 and a 200 day moving average of $2.63.

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

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Ballentine Partners LLC acquired a new stake in VNET Group during the second quarter worth approximately $36,000. AXA S.A. bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group during the 2nd quarter valued at about $65,000. Millennium Management LLC boosted its stake in VNET Group by 89.1% during the 2nd quarter. Millennium Management LLC now owns 2,973,358 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $6,229,000 after purchasing an additional 1,400,683 shares during the period. SG Americas Securities LLC acquired a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the 3rd quarter worth approximately $262,000. Finally, Inspire Investing LLC bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the 3rd quarter worth approximately $1,092,000. 72.83% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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.