LPL Financial LLC Invests $310,000 in GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS)

LPL Financial LLC acquired a new position in GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS - Free Report) in the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm acquired 13,058 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $310,000.

A number of other institutional investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the business. American Century Companies Inc. grew its holdings in shares of GDS by 509.6% during the fourth quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 2,323,482 shares of the company's stock valued at $55,206,000 after buying an additional 1,942,341 shares during the last quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lifted its position in GDS by 7,553.4% during the 3rd quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 610,821 shares of the company's stock worth $12,461,000 after acquiring an additional 602,840 shares during the period. Alberta Investment Management Corp purchased a new stake in GDS during the 4th quarter valued at about $4,935,000. Pacer Advisors Inc. increased its holdings in shares of GDS by 26.5% in the fourth quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 898,982 shares of the company's stock valued at $21,360,000 after purchasing an additional 188,072 shares during the period. Finally, OPTIMAS CAPITAL Ltd purchased a new position in shares of GDS in the fourth quarter worth about $4,096,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 33.71% of the company's stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of equities research analysts recently commented on the company. Jefferies Financial Group upgraded GDS from a "hold" rating to a "buy" rating and set a $45.00 target price on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, March 18th. StockNews.com downgraded shares of GDS from a "hold" rating to a "sell" rating in a report on Friday, February 28th. Raymond James raised shares of GDS from an "outperform" rating to a "strong-buy" rating and set a $53.00 target price for the company in a report on Thursday, March 20th. JMP Securities set a $40.00 price target on shares of GDS in a report on Thursday, March 20th. Finally, Daiwa Capital Markets upgraded GDS from a "neutral" rating to a "buy" rating in a research note on Tuesday, February 11th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, one has given a hold rating, five have issued a buy rating and three have assigned a strong buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of "Buy" and a consensus price target of $39.48.

GDS Stock Performance

GDS traded up $2.46 on Friday, reaching $28.22. The stock had a trading volume of 765,496 shares, compared to its average volume of 2,064,930. The business's 50-day moving average price is $27.64 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $25.22. The company has a current ratio of 1.19, a quick ratio of 1.19 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.25. GDS Holdings Limited has a 12-month low of $7.35 and a 12-month high of $52.50. The company has a market cap of $5.38 billion, a P/E ratio of -9.27 and a beta of 0.23.

GDS (NASDAQ:GDS - Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, March 19th. The company reported ($0.10) earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of ($0.27) by $0.17. The firm had revenue of $425.13 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.11 billion. GDS had a negative return on equity of 8.22% and a negative net margin of 35.97%. GDS's revenue for the quarter was up 9.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned ($2.16) EPS. Sell-side analysts forecast that GDS Holdings Limited will post -0.89 earnings per share for the current year.

About GDS

GDS Holdings Limited, together with its subsidiaries, develops and operates data centers in the People's Republic of China. The company provides colocation services comprising critical facilities space, customer-available power, racks, and cooling; managed hosting services, including business continuity and disaster recovery, network management, data storage, system security, operating system, database, and server middleware services; managed cloud services; and consulting services.