Traders Purchase Large Volume of VNET Group Call Options (NASDAQ:VNET)

Key Points

• Traders significantly increased their positions in VNET Group call options, with a total of 13,124 options purchased, marking a 106% rise from the average daily volume.
• Bank of America raised its price target for VNET Group from $11.80 to $12.60 and maintains a "buy" rating, while Wall Street Zen downgraded its rating from "hold" to "sell."
• The company reported a quarterly revenue of $339.65 million but missed earnings expectations, leading analysts to predict a current year EPS of -0.06.

VNET Group, Inc. - Unsponsored ADR (NASDAQ:VNET - Get Free Report) saw unusually large options trading on Wednesday. Stock traders purchased 13,124 call options on the stock. This is an increase of 106% compared to the average volume of 6,363 call options.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several analysts recently weighed in on VNET shares. Wall Street Zen lowered VNET Group from a "hold" rating to a "sell" rating in a research note on Saturday, August 23rd. Bank of America increased their target price on VNET Group from $11.80 to $12.60 and gave the company a "buy" rating in a research report on Friday, August 22nd. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating and five have issued a Buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of "Buy" and an average price target of $9.96.

VNET Group Stock Performance

VNET stock traded down $0.32 during midday trading on Friday, hitting $9.63. The company's stock had a trading volume of 8,442,986 shares, compared to its average volume of 6,987,597. The stock has a market cap of $2.59 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -120.38, a PEG ratio of 6.13 and a beta of 0.16. The stock's 50-day moving average price is $8.33 and its 200 day moving average price is $7.39. The company has a quick ratio of 0.97, a current ratio of 0.97 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.40. VNET Group has a 1 year low of $3.13 and a 1 year high of $16.13.

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET - Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, August 21st. The information technology services provider reported ($0.01) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.02 by ($0.03). VNET Group had a net margin of 0.74% and a return on equity of 0.98%. The firm had revenue of $339.65 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.27 billion. VNET Group has set its FY 2025 guidance at EPS. On average, equities analysts forecast that VNET Group will post -0.06 EPS for the current year.

VNET Group declared that its board has approved a share repurchase plan on Friday, June 27th that allows the company to buyback $0.00 in shares. This buyback authorization allows the information technology services provider to reacquire shares of its stock through open market purchases. Shares buyback plans are generally a sign that the company's board of directors believes its stock is undervalued.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the business. EverSource Wealth Advisors LLC raised its position in shares of VNET Group by 52.2% in the 2nd quarter. EverSource Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 4,157 shares of the information technology services provider's stock worth $29,000 after acquiring an additional 1,426 shares in the last quarter. Quantbot Technologies LP bought a new position in shares of VNET Group in the 1st quarter worth approximately $36,000. FNY Investment Advisers LLC bought a new position in shares of VNET Group in the 2nd quarter worth approximately $32,000. Summit Securities Group LLC bought a new position in shares of VNET Group in the 1st quarter worth approximately $40,000. Finally, Farther Finance Advisors LLC bought a new position in VNET Group during the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $34,000. Institutional investors own 72.83% of the company's stock.

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.