VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Shares Down 3.8% – Time to Sell?

Shares of VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) fell 3.8% during trading on Tuesday . The stock traded as low as $8.55 and last traded at $8.65. 818,525 shares traded hands during trading, a decline of 75% from the average session volume of 3,271,248 shares. The stock had previously closed at $8.99.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of equities analysts have recently commented on VNET shares. StockNews.com lowered shares of VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report on Friday, March 14th. UBS Group upped their price target on shares of VNET Group from $6.40 to $7.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, November 29th. Citigroup lifted their price objective on VNET Group from $16.10 to $20.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, March 14th. The Goldman Sachs Group raised VNET Group from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their target price for the company from $3.10 to $5.00 in a report on Friday, November 29th. Finally, Nomura Securities raised VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Friday, February 21st. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have given a buy rating and two have given a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, VNET Group currently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $9.30.

VNET Group Price Performance

The stock has a market cap of $2.19 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -3.83, a P/E/G ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.07. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.46, a current ratio of 0.83 and a quick ratio of 0.83. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $9.75 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $5.92.

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

Hedge Funds Weigh In On VNET Group

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in VNET. Barclays PLC boosted its holdings in shares of VNET Group by 229.3% in 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 in the last quarter. Point72 Asia Singapore Pte. Ltd. acquired a new position in VNET Group in the fourth quarter worth $41,000. Wolverine Trading LLC bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group during the third quarter worth $46,000. Catalina Capital Group LLC bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group during the fourth quarter worth $54,000. Finally, Hsbc Holdings PLC acquired a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the fourth quarter valued at $66,000. 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.