VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Trading Up 7.7% – Still a Buy?

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) shot up 7.7% during mid-day trading on Friday . The stock traded as high as $11.46 and last traded at $11.21. 2,827,502 shares were traded during mid-day trading, a decline of 71% from the average session volume of 9,788,974 shares. The stock had previously closed at $10.40.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of research firms have weighed in on VNET. UBS Group raised their price target on VNET Group from $6.40 to $7.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, November 29th. The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded VNET Group from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their price target for the company from $3.10 to $5.00 in a research note on Friday, November 29th. Finally, Nomura Securities upgraded VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Friday, February 21st. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating, five have issued a buy rating and two have issued a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus target price of $4.78.

VNET Group Stock Performance

The firm has a fifty day simple moving average of $9.09 and a 200-day simple moving average of $5.51. The company has a market cap of $2.97 billion, a PE ratio of -5.19, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.06. The company has a quick ratio of 0.83, a current ratio of 0.83 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.46.

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, March 12th. The information technology services provider reported ($0.01) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.03 by ($0.04). The firm had revenue of $307.75 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $284.88 million. VNET Group had a negative return on equity of 5.68% and a negative net margin of 28.54%. On average, research analysts forecast that VNET Group, Inc. will post -0.06 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On VNET Group

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Triata Capital Ltd purchased a new position in shares of VNET Group during the fourth quarter worth about $47,377,000. Millennium Management LLC boosted its holdings in VNET Group by 3.4% in the 4th quarter. Millennium Management LLC now owns 5,578,371 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $26,441,000 after purchasing an additional 181,749 shares in the last quarter. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. increased its position in VNET Group by 4.6% during the 4th quarter. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. now owns 2,145,529 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $10,170,000 after purchasing an additional 93,891 shares during the period. D. E. Shaw & Co. Inc. acquired a new position in VNET Group during the 4th quarter worth approximately $7,183,000. Finally, Bank of America Corp DE increased its position in VNET Group by 610.2% during the 4th quarter. Bank of America Corp DE now owns 1,198,750 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $5,682,000 after purchasing an additional 1,029,963 shares during the period. 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.