GDS (NASDAQ:GDS) Shares Gap Up – What’s Next?

GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS) gapped up before the market opened on Monday . The stock had previously closed at $25.68, but opened at $27.22. GDS shares last traded at $27.39, with a volume of 525,416 shares.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities research analysts recently commented on GDS shares. JMP Securities reiterated a “market outperform” rating and set a $40.00 price target on shares of GDS in a research note on Wednesday, May 21st. Citigroup reiterated an “outperform” rating on shares of GDS in a research note on Thursday, March 20th. Jefferies Financial Group raised shares of GDS from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $45.00 target price for the company in a report on Tuesday, March 18th. Raymond James raised GDS from an “outperform” rating to a “strong-buy” rating and set a $53.00 price target on the stock in a report on Thursday, March 20th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada downgraded GDS from an “outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating and lifted their target price for the company from $26.00 to $37.00 in a research note on Tuesday, February 25th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, five have assigned a buy rating and three have assigned a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Buy” and an average price target of $39.48.

GDS Price Performance

The company has a current ratio of 1.19, a quick ratio of 1.19 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.25. The business’s 50-day simple moving average is $24.75 and its 200 day simple moving average is $26.44. The company has a market capitalization of $5.26 billion, a P/E ratio of -9.04 and a beta of 0.25.

GDS (NASDAQ:GDS) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, May 20th. The company reported $0.48 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of ($0.22) by $0.70. The firm had revenue of $375.14 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.72 billion. GDS had a negative return on equity of 8.22% and a negative net margin of 35.97%. GDS’s quarterly revenue was up 3.6% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned ($1.96) earnings per share. As a group, sell-side analysts anticipate that GDS Holdings Limited will post -0.89 EPS for the current year.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On GDS

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of GDS. Macroview Investment Management LLC boosted its holdings in shares of GDS by 37.4% in the 4th quarter. Macroview Investment Management LLC now owns 18,550 shares of the company’s stock worth $441,000 after acquiring an additional 5,050 shares in the last quarter. State of New Jersey Common Pension Fund D bought a new stake in GDS during the 4th quarter worth about $1,938,000. Alberta Investment Management Corp bought a new position in shares of GDS in the fourth quarter worth about $4,935,000. Y Intercept Hong Kong Ltd lifted its position in shares of GDS by 165.5% during the fourth quarter. Y Intercept Hong Kong Ltd now owns 54,127 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,286,000 after purchasing an additional 33,741 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Raymond James Financial Inc. bought a new stake in shares of GDS during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $2,373,000. 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.