Investors Buy Large Volume of Put Options on GDS (NASDAQ:GDS)

GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS) was the target of some unusual options trading on Monday. Stock investors acquired 3,259 put options on the company. This represents an increase of approximately 84% compared to the average volume of 1,776 put options.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of brokerages have recently weighed in on GDS. Bank of America lifted their price target on GDS from $12.40 to $22.40 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 27th. Royal Bank of Canada boosted their target price on GDS from $14.00 to $26.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Monday, October 14th. Finally, Nomura Securities upgraded GDS to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Monday, August 26th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, one has given a hold rating, three have issued a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $18.29.

GDS Stock Performance

GDS opened at $23.80 on Tuesday. The company has a market cap of $4.53 billion, a PE ratio of -7.54 and a beta of 0.23. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $20.25 and a 200-day moving average of $13.85. GDS has a 52-week low of $5.01 and a 52-week high of $24.74. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.30, a quick ratio of 1.39 and a current ratio of 1.39.

GDS (NASDAQ:GDS) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, August 21st. The company reported ($0.18) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of ($0.25) by $0.07. The company had revenue of $388.92 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $384.14 million. GDS had a negative return on equity of 9.10% and a negative net margin of 39.96%. As a group, equities research analysts forecast that GDS will post -1.14 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On GDS

Large investors have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Connor Clark & Lunn Investment Management Ltd. acquired a new position in GDS in the 3rd quarter valued at approximately $1,001,000. Central Asset Investments & Management Holdings HK Ltd acquired a new position in shares of GDS in the 3rd quarter worth approximately $245,000. Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group Inc. acquired a new position in shares of GDS in the 3rd quarter worth approximately $544,000. GSA Capital Partners LLP acquired a new position in shares of GDS in the 3rd quarter worth approximately $544,000. Finally, abrdn plc raised its holdings in shares of GDS by 11.3% in the 3rd quarter. abrdn plc now owns 265,500 shares of the company’s stock worth $5,416,000 after buying an additional 26,900 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 33.71% of the company’s stock.

About GDS

GDS Holdings Limited, together with its subsidiaries, develops and operates data centers in the People's Republic of China. The company provides colocation services comprising critical facilities space, customer-available power, racks, and cooling; managed hosting services, including business continuity and disaster recovery, network management, data storage, system security, operating system, database, and server middleware services; managed cloud services; and consulting services.