Citigroup Forecasts Strong Price Appreciation for VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Stock

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) had its target price lifted by research analysts at Citigroup from $16.10 to $20.00 in a research report issued to clients and investors on Friday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage presently has a “buy” rating on the information technology services provider’s stock. Citigroup’s target price would suggest a potential upside of 73.43% from the company’s current price.

VNET has been the subject of a number of other research reports. The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded shares of VNET Group from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and increased their target price for the company from $3.10 to $5.00 in a research report on Friday, November 29th. UBS Group increased their target price on shares of VNET Group from $6.40 to $7.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, November 29th. Finally, Nomura Securities upgraded shares of VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Friday, February 21st. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating, five have assigned a buy rating and two have issued a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $7.98.

VNET Group Stock Performance

Shares of NASDAQ:VNET traded up $1.13 on Friday, reaching $11.53. 8,263,483 shares of the company’s stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 9,914,340. The firm has a market capitalization of $2.97 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -5.17, a PEG ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 0.06. VNET Group has a fifty-two week low of $1.42 and a fifty-two week high of $16.13. The business’s 50-day moving average is $9.09 and its two-hundred day moving average is $5.51. 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 released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, March 12th. The information technology services provider reported ($0.01) EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.03 by ($0.04). The firm had revenue of $307.75 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $284.88 million. VNET Group had a negative return on equity of 5.68% and a negative net margin of 28.54%. As a group, equities research analysts forecast that VNET Group will post -0.06 EPS for the current year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On VNET Group

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the business. Triata Capital Ltd acquired a new stake in VNET Group in the 4th quarter valued at about $47,377,000. Millennium Management LLC increased its position in shares of VNET Group by 3.4% in the fourth quarter. Millennium Management LLC now owns 5,578,371 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $26,441,000 after acquiring an additional 181,749 shares in the last quarter. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. increased its position in shares of VNET Group by 4.6% in the fourth quarter. MIRAE ASSET GLOBAL ETFS HOLDINGS Ltd. now owns 2,145,529 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $10,170,000 after acquiring an additional 93,891 shares in the last quarter. D. E. Shaw & Co. Inc. purchased a new position in shares of VNET Group in the fourth quarter worth approximately $7,183,000. Finally, Bank of America Corp DE increased its position in shares of VNET Group by 610.2% in the fourth quarter. Bank of America Corp DE now owns 1,198,750 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $5,682,000 after acquiring an additional 1,029,963 shares in the last quarter. 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.