VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Rating Lowered to "Sell" at Wall Street Zen

Key Points

• VNET Group has been downgraded from a "hold" rating to a "sell" rating by Wall Street Zen following disappointing earnings performance.
• Bank of America has increased VNET Group's target price from $11.80 to $12.60, reaffirming its "buy" rating, despite the stock's current consensus rating being "buy" with an average target price of $9.96.
• The company’s recent earnings report showed a loss per share of ($0.01) and revenue significantly below estimates, indicating ongoing financial challenges.

Wall Street Zen cut shares of VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET - Free Report) from a hold rating to a sell rating in a research report sent to investors on Saturday morning.

Separately, Bank of America lifted their price target on VNET Group from $11.80 to $12.60 and gave the company a "buy" rating in a report on Friday. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating and five have given a Buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of "Buy" and a consensus price target of $9.96.

VNET Group Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ:VNET traded down $0.03 during trading hours on Friday, hitting $7.81. 5,796,804 shares of the company's stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 7,819,231. The company's fifty day simple moving average is $7.55 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $7.81. The company has a market cap of $2.10 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -97.63, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 5.76 and a beta of 0.18. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.40, a quick ratio of 0.97 and a current ratio of 0.97. VNET Group has a 52 week low of $2.00 and a 52 week high of $16.13.

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET - Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Thursday, August 21st. The information technology services provider reported ($0.01) 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 business had revenue of $339.65 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.27 billion. VNET Group has set its FY 2025 guidance at EPS. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that VNET Group will post -0.06 EPS for the current fiscal year.

VNET Group declared that its Board of Directors has authorized a stock repurchase plan on Friday, June 27th that allows the company to buyback $0.00 in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization allows the information technology services provider to buy shares of its stock through open market purchases. Shares buyback plans are typically an indication that the company's board believes its shares are undervalued.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Renaissance Technologies LLC bought a new position in shares of VNET Group in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $250,000. Barclays PLC grew its position in shares of 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 purchasing an additional 4,939 shares during the last quarter. Marshall Wace LLP bought a new position in shares of VNET Group in the fourth quarter worth about $1,514,000. Tower Research Capital LLC TRC acquired a new position in shares of VNET Group during the 4th quarter worth about $80,000. Finally, Hsbc Holdings PLC bought a new stake in VNET Group during the 4th quarter valued at approximately $66,000. 72.83% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

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.