VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) Short Interest Up 29.3% in February

VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) was the target of a significant increase in short interest in February. As of February 15th, there was short interest totalling 18,100,000 shares, an increase of 29.3% from the January 31st total of 14,000,000 shares. Based on an average daily volume of 6,270,000 shares, the short-interest ratio is currently 2.9 days.

Institutional Trading of VNET Group

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Triata Capital Ltd acquired a new stake in VNET Group during the 4th quarter worth approximately $47,377,000. D. E. Shaw & Co. Inc. acquired a new position in shares of VNET Group during the fourth quarter worth $7,183,000. Man Group plc acquired a new position in shares of VNET Group during the fourth quarter worth $5,094,000. Bank of America Corp DE grew its stake 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 purchasing an additional 1,029,963 shares during the last quarter. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased its holdings in VNET Group by 622.8% in the fourth quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 989,402 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $4,690,000 after purchasing an additional 852,519 shares during the period. 72.83% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

VNET Group Price Performance

VNET stock traded up $1.65 during midday trading on Wednesday, reaching $12.36. 10,022,402 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 9,249,307. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.46, a current ratio of 0.83 and a quick ratio of 0.83. The stock has a market capitalization of $3.18 billion, a PE ratio of -5.56, a P/E/G ratio of 1.01 and a beta of -0.18. VNET Group has a 52 week low of $1.42 and a 52 week high of $16.13. The company has a fifty day moving average price of $8.11 and a 200 day moving average price of $5.08.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of brokerages have weighed in on VNET. UBS Group raised their target price on VNET Group from $6.40 to $7.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, November 29th. The Goldman Sachs Group raised VNET Group from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their price objective for the company from $3.10 to $5.00 in a research note on Friday, November 29th. Finally, Nomura Securities raised VNET Group to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Friday, February 21st. One analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating, five have issued a buy rating and two have issued a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $4.78.

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.