Raymond James Upgrades GDS (NASDAQ:GDS) to “Strong-Buy”

GDS (NASDAQ:GDS) was upgraded by equities research analysts at Raymond James from an “outperform” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note issued on Thursday, MarketBeat reports. The brokerage presently has a $53.00 price objective on the stock. Raymond James’ target price would suggest a potential upside of 91.54% from the company’s current price.

A number of other analysts have also weighed in on the company. Royal Bank of Canada lowered GDS from an “outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating and increased their target price for the stock from $26.00 to $37.00 in a research note on Tuesday, February 25th. StockNews.com lowered GDS from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research note on Friday, February 28th. Citizens Jmp upgraded GDS to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Monday, January 27th. Jefferies Financial Group upgraded GDS from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $45.00 target price on the stock in a research note on Tuesday. Finally, Daiwa Capital Markets upgraded GDS from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, February 11th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, two have assigned a hold rating, four have given a buy rating and three have issued a strong buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $33.23.

GDS Stock Performance

NASDAQ:GDS opened at $27.67 on Thursday. The stock’s fifty day moving average is $31.34 and its 200 day moving average is $24.52. GDS has a fifty-two week low of $5.85 and a fifty-two week high of $52.50. The firm has a market capitalization of $5.27 billion, a PE ratio of -9.07 and a beta of 0.06. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.25, a quick ratio of 1.19 and a current ratio of 1.19.

GDS (NASDAQ:GDS) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, March 19th. The company reported ($0.10) earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of ($0.27) by $0.17. GDS had a negative return on equity of 8.22% and a negative net margin of 35.97%. The company had revenue of $425.13 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.11 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm posted ($2.16) EPS. GDS’s quarterly revenue was up 9.1% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, sell-side analysts anticipate that GDS will post -0.89 earnings per share for the current year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On GDS

A number of institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. boosted its position in GDS by 26.8% during the fourth quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 3,177 shares of the company’s stock valued at $75,000 after purchasing an additional 672 shares in the last quarter. BNP Paribas Financial Markets boosted its position in GDS by 1.4% during the third quarter. BNP Paribas Financial Markets now owns 182,388 shares of the company’s stock valued at $3,721,000 after purchasing an additional 2,543 shares in the last quarter. Blue Trust Inc. boosted its position in GDS by 121.9% during the fourth quarter. Blue Trust Inc. now owns 5,557 shares of the company’s stock valued at $132,000 after purchasing an additional 3,053 shares in the last quarter. Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio bought a new stake in GDS during the third quarter valued at about $64,000. Finally, Invesco Ltd. boosted its position in GDS by 4.1% during the fourth quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 88,423 shares of the company’s stock valued at $2,101,000 after purchasing an additional 3,481 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors 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.