VNET Group Target of Unusually High Options Trading (NASDAQ:VNET)

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) was the target of unusually large options trading activity on Monday. Stock traders purchased 15,633 call options on the stock. This is an increase of 215% compared to the typical daily volume of 4,969 call options.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research firms have issued reports on VNET. UBS Group lifted their price target on shares of VNET Group from $6.40 to $7.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, November 29th. Citigroup boosted their target price on shares of VNET Group from $16.10 to $20.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, March 14th. 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 shares of VNET Group from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and upped their price objective for the stock from $3.10 to $5.00 in a research report on Friday, November 29th. Finally, StockNews.com downgraded shares of VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report on Friday, March 14th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have given a buy rating and two have assigned a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $9.30.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On VNET Group

A number of hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Barclays PLC lifted its holdings in VNET Group by 229.3% during the 4th quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 7,093 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $34,000 after buying an additional 4,939 shares in the last quarter. Point72 Asia Singapore Pte. Ltd. acquired a new stake in shares of VNET Group in the 4th quarter valued at $41,000. Catalina Capital Group LLC purchased a new stake in VNET Group in the fourth quarter valued at $54,000. Wolverine Trading LLC purchased a new stake in VNET Group in the third quarter valued at $46,000. Finally, Hsbc Holdings PLC purchased a new stake in VNET Group in the fourth quarter valued at $66,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 72.83% of the company’s stock.

VNET Group Price Performance

NASDAQ VNET traded up $0.29 during trading hours on Monday, hitting $9.00. 2,808,296 shares of the company’s stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 3,251,769. The firm’s 50-day moving average is $9.67 and its 200-day moving average is $5.88. VNET Group has a 52-week low of $1.42 and a 52-week high of $16.13. 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 has a market capitalization of $2.32 billion, a PE ratio of -4.05, a PEG ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.07.

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 the consensus estimate of $0.03 by ($0.04). The firm had revenue of $307.75 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $284.88 million. VNET Group had a negative net margin of 28.54% and a negative return on equity of 5.68%. Equities analysts forecast that VNET Group will post -0.06 EPS 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.