VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Shares Gap Down After Earnings Miss

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) gapped down prior to trading on Thursday after the company announced weaker than expected quarterly earnings. 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 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 for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $284.88 million.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of equities analysts have weighed in on VNET shares. 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 report on Friday, November 29th. Nomura Securities upgraded shares of VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Friday, February 21st. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded shares of VNET Group from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and boosted their price objective for the stock from $3.10 to $5.00 in a research note on Friday, November 29th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating, five have given a buy rating and two have given a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus target price of $4.78.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On VNET Group

Several institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the business. Connor Clark & Lunn Investment Management Ltd. acquired a new stake in VNET Group in the third quarter valued at approximately $199,000. Walleye Capital LLC acquired a new stake in VNET Group in the third quarter valued at approximately $115,000. Wolverine Trading LLC acquired a new stake in VNET Group in the third quarter valued at approximately $46,000. XTX Topco Ltd acquired a new stake in VNET Group in the third quarter valued at approximately $343,000. Finally, Anson Funds Management LP grew its position in VNET Group by 84.9% in the third quarter. Anson Funds Management LP now owns 450,000 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $1,836,000 after acquiring an additional 206,580 shares in the last quarter. 72.83% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

VNET Group Price Performance

The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.46, a current ratio of 0.83 and a quick ratio of 0.83. The company’s 50-day simple moving average is $8.99 and its 200-day simple moving average is $5.47. The company has a market cap of $2.68 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -4.68, a P/E/G ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.06.

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.