Stock Traders Buy High Volume of Call Options on VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET)

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) was the recipient of unusually large options trading on Monday. Stock investors purchased 15,633 call options on the company. This is an increase of 215% compared to the average volume of 4,969 call options.

VNET Group Trading Up 3.2 %

NASDAQ:VNET opened at $8.99 on Tuesday. The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $9.75 and a 200 day moving average price of $5.92. 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 has a 12-month low of $1.42 and a 12-month high of $16.13. The firm has a market cap of $2.31 billion, a PE ratio of -4.05, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.07.

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) last announced its quarterly earnings data 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). VNET Group had a negative net margin of 28.54% and a negative return on equity of 5.68%. The firm had revenue of $307.75 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $284.88 million. Sell-side analysts anticipate that VNET Group will post -0.06 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On VNET Group

A number of institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of VNET. Barclays PLC grew its stake in shares of VNET Group by 229.3% in the 4th quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 7,093 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $34,000 after purchasing an additional 4,939 shares during the last quarter. Point72 Asia Singapore Pte. Ltd. purchased a new stake in shares of VNET Group during the fourth quarter worth approximately $41,000. Catalina Capital Group LLC acquired a new stake in shares of VNET Group during the fourth quarter worth $54,000. Wolverine Trading LLC purchased a new position in VNET Group in the 3rd quarter valued at $46,000. Finally, Hsbc Holdings PLC purchased a new position in VNET Group in the 4th quarter valued at $66,000. 72.83% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analyst Ratings Changes

VNET has been the topic of a number of recent research reports. Nomura Securities upgraded shares of VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Friday, February 21st. The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded VNET Group from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and boosted their target price for the stock from $3.10 to $5.00 in a report on Friday, November 29th. StockNews.com cut VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Friday, March 14th. UBS Group boosted their price objective on VNET Group from $6.40 to $7.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, November 29th. Finally, Citigroup raised their target price on VNET Group from $16.10 to $20.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, March 14th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have assigned a buy rating and two have assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has an average rating of “Buy” and a consensus target price of $9.30.

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.