VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) Sees Large Growth in Short Interest

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) saw a large increase in short interest during the month of February. As of February 28th, there was short interest totalling 21,230,000 shares, an increase of 17.3% from the February 13th total of 18,100,000 shares. Based on an average daily volume of 7,590,000 shares, the short-interest ratio is presently 2.8 days. Currently, 9.4% of the company’s shares are short sold.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities analysts recently commented on the stock. Nomura Securities raised shares of VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Friday, February 21st. StockNews.com cut shares of VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report on Friday, March 14th. UBS Group increased their price target on shares of VNET Group from $6.40 to $7.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, November 29th. Citigroup increased their price target on shares of VNET Group from $16.10 to $20.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, March 14th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group raised shares of VNET Group from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and increased their price target for the company from $3.10 to $5.00 in a research report on Friday, November 29th. 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 stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has an average rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $9.30.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On VNET Group

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

VNET Group Trading Down 10.1 %

NASDAQ:VNET opened at $8.86 on Friday. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $9.60 and a 200-day moving average price of $5.79. VNET Group has a 12 month low of $1.42 and a 12 month high of $16.13. The company has a current ratio of 0.83, a quick ratio of 0.83 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.46. The stock has a market cap of $2.28 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -3.99, a P/E/G ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.07.

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

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.