Investors Purchase High Volume of Call Options on VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET)

VNET Group, Inc. – Unsponsored ADR (NASDAQ:VNET) was the target of unusually large options trading on Tuesday. Investors acquired 10,613 call options on the stock. This is an increase of 82% compared to the typical volume of 5,831 call options.

Institutional Trading of VNET Group

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio raised its stake in VNET Group by 16.8% during the 2nd quarter. Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio now owns 14,600 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $101,000 after acquiring an additional 2,100 shares during the last quarter. Quantbot Technologies LP purchased a new stake in shares of VNET Group during the first quarter worth approximately $36,000. Summit Securities Group LLC acquired a new stake in shares of VNET Group during the first quarter worth $40,000. Barclays PLC grew its position in VNET Group by 229.3% in the 4th quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 7,093 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $34,000 after buying an additional 4,939 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Farther Finance Advisors LLC acquired a new position in VNET Group in the 2nd quarter valued at $34,000. 72.83% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

VNET Group Stock Performance

Shares of VNET stock opened at $9.04 on Wednesday. The firm has a 50 day moving average of $6.32 and a two-hundred day moving average of $7.43. The stock has a market capitalization of $2.43 billion, a PE ratio of -904.00, a P/E/G ratio of 1.49 and a beta of 0.14. The company has a quick ratio of 1.10, a current ratio of 1.10 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.34. VNET Group has a 52 week low of $1.71 and a 52 week high of $16.13.

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, May 28th. The information technology services provider reported ($0.12) earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.01) by ($0.11). VNET Group had a return on equity of 2.11% and a net margin of 1.66%. The firm had revenue of $309.52 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $2.22 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted ($0.28) earnings per share. On average, research analysts predict that VNET Group will post -0.06 EPS for the current fiscal year.

VNET Group announced that its board has approved a share buyback program on Friday, June 27th that permits the company to buyback $0.00 in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization permits the information technology services provider to reacquire shares of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback programs are usually a sign that the company’s board believes its shares are undervalued.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Separately, Wall Street Zen raised shares of VNET Group from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Sunday. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating, four have issued a buy rating and two have assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Buy” and an average price target of $9.30.

VNET Group Company Profile

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.