VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Sees Large Volume Increase – Should You Buy?

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) shares saw an uptick in trading volume on Thursday . 2,881,808 shares traded hands during trading, a decline of 9% from the previous session’s volume of 3,167,304 shares.The stock last traded at $9.46 and had previously closed at $9.85.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

VNET has been the subject of a number of research reports. UBS Group lifted their target price on VNET Group from $6.40 to $7.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, November 29th. Nomura Securities upgraded VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Friday, February 21st. The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded 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 research note on Friday, November 29th. Citigroup increased their price objective on shares of VNET Group from $16.10 to $20.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, March 14th. Finally, StockNews.com downgraded shares of VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report on Friday, March 14th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have assigned a buy rating and two have assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, VNET Group presently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus price target of $9.30.

VNET Group Stock Performance

The company has a fifty day moving average of $9.54 and a 200 day moving average of $5.77. 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 has a market cap of $2.33 billion, a P/E ratio of -4.08, a PEG ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.07.

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, March 12th. The information technology services provider reported ($0.01) earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.03 by ($0.04). The business had revenue of $307.75 million for 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, equities analysts predict that VNET Group, Inc. will post -0.06 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On VNET Group

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Barclays PLC lifted its stake 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 valued at $34,000 after buying an additional 4,939 shares in the last quarter. Point72 Asia Singapore Pte. Ltd. purchased a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $41,000. Wolverine Trading LLC purchased a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the 3rd quarter valued at approximately $46,000. Catalina Capital Group LLC acquired a new position in VNET Group in the 4th quarter worth approximately $54,000. Finally, Hsbc Holdings PLC purchased a new position in VNET Group during the 4th quarter worth approximately $66,000. 72.83% of the stock is 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.