GDS (NASDAQ:GDS) Sees Unusually-High Trading Volume After Analyst Upgrade

Shares of GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS) saw unusually-strong trading volume on Monday after Royal Bank of Canada raised their price target on the stock from $14.00 to $26.00. Royal Bank of Canada currently has an outperform rating on the stock. Approximately 1,267,234 shares changed hands during trading, a decline of 22% from the previous session’s volume of 1,615,138 shares.The stock last traded at $22.19 and had previously closed at $21.48.

GDS has been the topic of a number of other research reports. Nomura Securities upgraded GDS to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Monday, August 26th. Bank of America raised their price objective on GDS from $12.40 to $22.40 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 27th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, one has assigned a hold rating, three have given a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, GDS currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $18.29.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Creative Planning lifted its stake in shares of GDS by 10.3% in the 2nd quarter. Creative Planning now owns 99,850 shares of the company’s stock valued at $928,000 after purchasing an additional 9,332 shares during the period. Vanguard Personalized Indexing Management LLC purchased a new position in shares of GDS in the 2nd quarter worth approximately $108,000. Quadrature Capital Ltd purchased a new position in shares of GDS in the 4th quarter worth approximately $107,000. Swedbank AB boosted its stake in shares of GDS by 3.7% in the 3rd quarter. Swedbank AB now owns 338,974 shares of the company’s stock worth $6,915,000 after buying an additional 12,100 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Marshall Wace LLP purchased a new position in GDS in the second quarter valued at approximately $203,000. 33.71% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

GDS Trading Down 5.4 %

The company has a quick ratio of 1.39, a current ratio of 1.39 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.30. The firm has a 50 day moving average of $17.40 and a 200 day moving average of $11.94. The firm has a market cap of $4.01 billion, a PE ratio of -6.55 and a beta of 0.24.

GDS (NASDAQ:GDS) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, August 21st. The company reported ($0.18) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of ($0.25) by $0.07. The firm had revenue of $388.92 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $384.14 million. GDS had a negative return on equity of 9.10% and a negative net margin of 39.96%. Equities analysts anticipate that GDS Holdings Limited will post -1.14 earnings per share for the current year.

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.