VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Trading Up 7.7% Following Analyst Upgrade

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET)’s share price rose 7.7% on Friday after Citigroup raised their price target on the stock from $16.10 to $20.00. Citigroup currently has a buy rating on the stock. VNET Group traded as high as $11.46 and last traded at $11.21. Approximately 2,827,502 shares changed hands during trading, a decline of 71% from the average daily volume of 9,788,974 shares. The stock had previously closed at $10.40.

Several other research analysts have also weighed in on the stock. Nomura Securities raised shares of VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Friday, February 21st. The Goldman Sachs Group raised shares of VNET Group from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and lifted their price target for the company from $3.10 to $5.00 in a research note on Friday, November 29th. Finally, UBS Group boosted their price objective on shares of VNET Group from $6.40 to $7.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, November 29th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, five have assigned a buy rating and two have given a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $7.98.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On VNET Group

A number of institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Barclays PLC increased its holdings in VNET Group by 229.3% during the fourth quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 7,093 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $34,000 after buying an additional 4,939 shares during the last quarter. Headlands Technologies LLC increased its holdings in shares of VNET Group by 5.7% in the fourth quarter. Headlands Technologies LLC now owns 144,499 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $685,000 after purchasing an additional 7,737 shares during the last quarter. Point72 Asia Singapore Pte. Ltd. acquired a new position in shares of VNET Group in the fourth quarter valued at $41,000. Catalina Capital Group LLC acquired a new position in shares of VNET Group in the fourth quarter valued at $54,000. Finally, Wolverine Trading LLC bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the third quarter valued at about $46,000. 72.83% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

VNET Group Stock Performance

The stock’s 50-day moving average price is $9.23 and its 200-day moving average price is $5.60. The company has a market cap of $3.00 billion, a P/E ratio of -5.25, a PEG ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.06. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.46, a current ratio of 0.83 and a quick ratio of 0.83.

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, March 12th. The information technology services provider reported ($0.01) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.03 by ($0.04). The firm 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%. Equities analysts anticipate that VNET Group, Inc. will post -0.06 EPS for the current year.

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.