VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) Sees Significant Growth in Short Interest

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) was the target of a significant growth in short interest during the month of 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. Based on an average trading volume of 9,200,000 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 3.5 days. Currently, 14.4% of the company’s stock are sold short.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities analysts have recently issued reports on the stock. Nomura Securities upgraded shares of VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Friday, February 21st. StockNews.com cut shares of VNET Group from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Friday, March 14th. Finally, Citigroup boosted their price objective on shares of VNET Group from $16.10 to $20.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, March 14th. One equities research 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. According to data from MarketBeat, VNET Group presently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus target price of $9.30.

VNET Group Stock Performance

Shares of NASDAQ VNET opened at $8.20 on Tuesday. The stock has a market cap of $2.11 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -3.69, 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 50 day simple moving average of $10.05 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $6.12. 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 (NASDAQ:VNET) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, March 12th. The information technology services provider reported ($0.01) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.03 by ($0.04). The business had revenue of $307.75 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $284.88 million. VNET Group had a negative net margin of 28.54% and a negative return on equity of 5.68%. As a group, analysts predict that VNET Group will post -0.06 earnings per share for the current year.

Institutional Trading of VNET Group

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

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.