VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) Short Interest Update

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) was the recipient of a significant growth in short interest in March. As of March 15th, there was short interest totalling 32,500,000 shares, a growth of 53.1% from the February 28th total of 21,230,000 shares. Approximately 14.4% of the shares of the stock are sold short. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 9,200,000 shares, the short-interest ratio is presently 3.5 days.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

VNET has been the subject of several research reports. Nomura Securities raised VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Friday, February 21st. StockNews.com downgraded VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Friday, March 14th. Finally, Citigroup lifted their price target 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 investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have given a buy rating and two have given a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $9.30.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in VNET Group by 237.7% during the third quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 298,539 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $1,218,000 after acquiring an additional 210,124 shares during the period. Asset Management One Co. Ltd. acquired a new position in shares of VNET Group during the 4th quarter worth about $152,000. JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted its stake in VNET Group by 136,783.0% during the 3rd quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 136,883 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $558,000 after purchasing an additional 136,783 shares during the period. Virtu Financial LLC acquired a new stake in VNET Group in the 3rd quarter valued at approximately $519,000. Finally, Los Angeles Capital Management LLC bought a new position in VNET Group in the 4th quarter worth approximately $294,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 72.83% of the company’s stock.

VNET Group Stock Down 8.4 %

VNET stock opened at $8.25 on Monday. The company has a 50 day moving average of $10.00 and a two-hundred day moving average of $6.08. The company has a market cap of $2.12 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -3.72, a PEG ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.07. VNET Group has a 12-month low of $1.42 and a 12-month high of $16.13. The company has a quick ratio of 0.83, a current ratio of 0.83 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.46.

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, March 12th. The information technology services provider reported ($0.01) earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.03 by ($0.04). The firm had revenue of $307.75 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $284.88 million. VNET Group had a negative return on equity of 5.68% and a negative net margin of 28.54%. On average, equities analysts anticipate that VNET Group will post -0.06 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

About VNET Group

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.