VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Shares Gap Down Following Weak Earnings

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET)’s stock price gapped down prior to trading on Thursday following a weaker than expected earnings announcement. The stock had previously closed at $11.00, but opened at $10.00. VNET Group shares last traded at $10.09, with a volume of 6,978,067 shares.

The information technology services provider reported ($0.01) earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates 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 business had revenue of $307.75 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $284.88 million.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several research firms recently issued reports on VNET. StockNews.com lowered shares of VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report on Friday. The Goldman Sachs Group raised VNET Group from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and increased their target price for the stock from $3.10 to $5.00 in a report on Friday, November 29th. UBS Group raised their target price on VNET Group from $6.40 to $7.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, November 29th. Nomura Securities upgraded VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Friday, February 21st. Finally, Citigroup lifted their price objective on VNET Group from $16.10 to $20.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, five have given a buy rating and two have assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, VNET Group currently has an average rating of “Buy” and a consensus price target of $7.98.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On VNET Group

Several institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of VNET. Barclays PLC increased its stake in shares of VNET Group by 229.3% in 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. bought a new stake in VNET Group during the 4th quarter worth about $41,000. Wolverine Trading LLC acquired a new stake in VNET Group in the 3rd quarter valued at about $46,000. Catalina Capital Group LLC acquired a new stake in VNET Group in the 4th quarter valued at about $54,000. Finally, Hsbc Holdings PLC bought a new position in shares of VNET Group in the fourth quarter worth about $66,000. Institutional investors own 72.83% of the company’s stock.

VNET Group Price Performance

The company has a quick ratio of 0.83, a current ratio of 0.83 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.46. The stock’s 50-day moving average price is $9.09 and its 200-day moving average price is $5.51. The company has a market capitalization of $3.00 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -5.25, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.06.

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.