VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Shares Down 5.7% – Time to Sell?

Shares of VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) traded down 5.7% during mid-day trading on Tuesday . The company traded as low as $7.67 and last traded at $7.74. 1,636,833 shares traded hands during trading, a decline of 53% from the average session volume of 3,512,400 shares. The stock had previously closed at $8.20.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of analysts have weighed in on VNET shares. Nomura Securities upgraded shares of VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Friday, February 21st. Citigroup raised their price objective on VNET Group from $16.10 to $20.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, March 14th. Finally, StockNews.com cut VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Friday, March 14th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have given a buy rating and two have assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, VNET Group presently has an average rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $9.30.

VNET Group Price Performance

The stock has a market cap of $2.05 billion, a P/E ratio of -3.57, a P/E/G ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.07. The company’s 50 day moving average price is $10.05 and its 200-day moving average price is $6.12. 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 posted its quarterly earnings data 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 analyst estimates 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 expect that VNET Group, Inc. will post -0.06 earnings per share for the current year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On VNET Group

Large investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. Vident Advisory LLC boosted its position in VNET Group by 91.6% during the fourth quarter. Vident Advisory LLC now owns 283,296 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $1,343,000 after acquiring an additional 135,467 shares during the last quarter. Squarepoint Ops LLC bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group during the 4th quarter valued at about $132,000. Two Sigma Investments LP bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group during the 4th quarter valued at about $2,911,000. Triata Capital Ltd acquired a new stake in VNET Group during the fourth quarter worth approximately $47,377,000. Finally, Sig Brokerage LP acquired a new position in VNET Group in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $270,000. 72.83% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.