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

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) saw a large increase in short interest in 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 trading volume of 7,590,000 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 2.8 days. Approximately 9.4% of the company’s stock are sold short.

VNET Group Stock Down 10.1 %

VNET Group stock opened at $8.86 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $2.28 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -3.99, a PEG ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.07. The stock has a fifty day simple moving average of $9.60 and a two-hundred day simple moving average 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.

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 analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.03 by ($0.04). The business had revenue of $307.75 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $284.88 million. VNET Group had a negative return on equity of 5.68% and a negative net margin of 28.54%. Equities analysts predict that VNET Group will post -0.06 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of brokerages recently issued reports on VNET. UBS Group lifted 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 lifted 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. StockNews.com lowered shares of VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research note on Friday, March 14th. The Goldman Sachs Group raised shares of VNET Group from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and lifted their target price for the stock from $3.10 to $5.00 in a report on Friday, November 29th. Finally, Nomura Securities raised shares of VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Friday, February 21st. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have assigned a buy rating and two have given a strong buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $9.30.

Institutional Trading of VNET Group

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of VNET. Barclays PLC grew its holdings 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 worth $34,000 after acquiring an additional 4,939 shares during the period. Point72 Asia Singapore Pte. Ltd. bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the fourth quarter worth $41,000. Catalina Capital Group LLC bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the fourth quarter worth $54,000. Wolverine Trading LLC bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the third quarter worth $46,000. Finally, Hsbc Holdings PLC bought a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the fourth quarter worth $66,000. Institutional investors own 72.83% of the company’s stock.

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.