VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Stock Price Down 4.7% – Here’s Why

Shares of VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) traded down 4.7% on Thursday . The stock traded as low as $3.45 and last traded at $3.45. 60,962 shares were traded during mid-day trading, a decline of 96% from the average session volume of 1,506,751 shares. The stock had previously closed at $3.62.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

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

VNET Group Stock Performance

The firm’s fifty day simple moving average is $3.12 and its 200 day simple moving average is $2.38. The company has a market capitalization of $885.46 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of -1.46, a PEG ratio of 7.13 and a beta of -0.30. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.47, a current ratio of 0.87 and a quick ratio of 0.87.

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) last announced its earnings results on Tuesday, August 27th. The information technology services provider reported $0.06 EPS for the quarter, topping 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 analysts’ expectations of $266.56 million. On average, sell-side analysts forecast that VNET Group, Inc. will post 0.02 EPS for the current year.

Institutional Trading of VNET Group

Several institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Catalina Capital Group LLC acquired a new stake in shares of VNET Group during the first quarter worth approximately $26,000. Ballentine Partners LLC bought a new position in VNET Group during the second quarter valued at approximately $36,000. AXA S.A. bought a new position in VNET Group during the second quarter valued at approximately $65,000. Blue Trust Inc. raised its position in VNET Group by 785.4% during the third 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 in the last quarter. Finally, Headlands Technologies LLC raised its position in VNET Group by 1,199.7% during the first quarter. Headlands Technologies LLC now owns 42,305 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $66,000 after acquiring an additional 39,050 shares in the last quarter. 72.83% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.