GDS (NASDAQ:GDS) Shares Up 5.1% – Should You Buy?

GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS)’s share price traded up 5.1% on Friday . The stock traded as high as $21.81 and last traded at $21.74. 67,361 shares traded hands during mid-day trading, a decline of 96% from the average session volume of 1,607,607 shares. The stock had previously closed at $20.69.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

GDS has been the topic of several research analyst reports. Bank of America raised their target price on GDS from $12.40 to $22.40 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 27th. Royal Bank of Canada raised their price target on shares of GDS from $14.00 to $26.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Monday, October 14th. Finally, Nomura Securities upgraded shares of GDS to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Monday, August 26th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, one has issued a hold rating, three have assigned a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, GDS has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $18.29.

GDS Stock Performance

The company has a current ratio of 1.39, a quick ratio of 1.39 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.30. The stock has a market cap of $4.14 billion, a P/E ratio of -6.77 and a beta of 0.24. The company’s 50-day simple moving average is $18.65 and its 200 day simple moving average is $12.52.

GDS (NASDAQ:GDS) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, August 21st. The company reported ($0.18) EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.25) by $0.07. GDS had a negative return on equity of 9.10% and a negative net margin of 39.96%. The firm had revenue of $388.92 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $384.14 million. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that GDS Holdings Limited will post -1.14 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On GDS

A number of large investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. Blue Trust Inc. lifted its position in GDS by 1,558.3% during the third quarter. Blue Trust Inc. now owns 2,504 shares of the company’s stock valued at $51,000 after purchasing an additional 2,353 shares during the last quarter. Quadrature Capital Ltd bought a new position in shares of GDS during the 4th quarter valued at $107,000. Vanguard Personalized Indexing Management LLC purchased a new position in shares of GDS in the second quarter worth about $108,000. Signaturefd LLC lifted its stake in shares of GDS by 17.3% in the 3rd quarter. Signaturefd LLC now owns 8,221 shares of the company’s stock valued at $168,000 after acquiring an additional 1,215 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Capstone Investment Advisors LLC purchased a new stake in GDS during the 1st quarter valued at about $188,000. 33.71% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

GDS Company Profile

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.