VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Rating Lowered to Sell at Wall Street Zen

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) was downgraded by stock analysts at Wall Street Zen from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report issued to clients and investors on Saturday.

Separately, Citigroup raised their price objective on shares of VNET Group from $16.10 to $20.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, March 14th. One investment 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’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and an average price target of $9.30.

VNET Group Trading Up 9.5%

Shares of VNET opened at $7.75 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.34, a current ratio of 1.10 and a quick ratio of 1.10. The firm has a 50 day simple moving average of $6.13 and a 200-day simple moving average of $7.22. VNET Group has a 1-year low of $1.71 and a 1-year high of $16.13. The stock has a market cap of $2.08 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -775.00, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.46 and a beta of 0.14.

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, May 28th. The information technology services provider reported ($0.12) earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.01) by ($0.11). VNET Group had a return on equity of 2.11% and a net margin of 1.66%. The business had revenue of $309.52 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $2.22 billion. During the same period last year, the business earned ($0.28) earnings per share. Equities analysts forecast that VNET Group will post -0.06 EPS for the current fiscal year.

VNET Group announced that its board has approved a stock buyback program on Friday, June 27th that permits the company to repurchase $0.00 in shares. This repurchase authorization permits the information technology services provider to repurchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Shares repurchase programs are often a sign that the company’s board believes its shares are undervalued.

Institutional Trading of VNET Group

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of VNET. Connor Clark & Lunn Investment Management Ltd. grew its stake in VNET Group by 472.1% in the 4th quarter. Connor Clark & Lunn Investment Management Ltd. now owns 278,801 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,322,000 after acquiring an additional 230,068 shares during the period. American Century Companies Inc. grew its stake in VNET Group by 20.4% in the 4th quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 474,929 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $2,251,000 after acquiring an additional 80,516 shares during the period. JPMorgan Chase & Co. grew its stake in VNET Group by 622.8% in the 4th quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 989,402 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $4,690,000 after acquiring an additional 852,519 shares during the period. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in VNET Group in the 4th quarter worth approximately $1,708,000. Finally, Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership purchased a new stake in VNET Group in the 4th quarter worth approximately $1,811,000. 72.83% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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.