GDS (NASDAQ:GDS) Shares Down 4.2% – Time to Sell?

GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS) was down 4.2% on Thursday . The stock traded as low as $29.00 and last traded at $29.33. Approximately 988,987 shares traded hands during trading, a decline of 48% from the average daily volume of 1,917,702 shares. The stock had previously closed at $30.61.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities research analysts have recently commented on GDS shares. Daiwa Capital Markets raised shares of GDS from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, February 11th. Jefferies Financial Group upgraded shares of GDS from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $45.00 target price on the stock in a research note on Tuesday. Royal Bank of Canada cut shares of GDS from an “outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating and upped their price target for the company from $26.00 to $37.00 in a research note on Tuesday, February 25th. Citizens Jmp upgraded shares of GDS to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Monday, January 27th. Finally, Raymond James upgraded shares of GDS from an “outperform” rating to a “strong-buy” rating and set a $53.00 price target on the stock in a research note on Thursday. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, two have given a hold rating, four have issued a buy rating and three have assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $33.23.

GDS Stock Down 3.3 %

The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $31.34 and its 200 day moving average price is $24.52. The stock has a market cap of $5.27 billion, a P/E ratio of -9.07 and a beta of 0.06. 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 (NASDAQ:GDS) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, March 19th. The company reported ($0.10) EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of ($0.27) by $0.17. The company had revenue of $425.13 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.11 billion. GDS had a negative net margin of 35.97% and a negative return on equity of 8.22%. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 9.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned ($2.16) EPS. As a group, research analysts forecast that GDS Holdings Limited will post -0.89 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Bamco Inc. NY lifted its position in GDS by 128.6% during the third quarter. Bamco Inc. NY now owns 6,040,555 shares of the company’s stock valued at $123,227,000 after purchasing an additional 3,397,592 shares during the period. American Century Companies Inc. lifted its position in 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 purchasing an additional 1,942,341 shares during the period. Triata Capital Ltd purchased a new stake in GDS during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $41,472,000. Sachem Head Capital Management LP increased its holdings in GDS by 161.6% during the third quarter. Sachem Head Capital Management LP now owns 2,825,000 shares of the company’s stock valued at $57,630,000 after buying an additional 1,745,000 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan Trust Fund purchased a new stake in GDS during the third quarter valued at approximately $27,212,000. Institutional investors own 33.71% of the company’s stock.

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.