Short Interest in GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS) Rises By 6.6%

GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS) was the target of a large increase in short interest during the month of September. As of September 15th, there was short interest totalling 7,450,000 shares, an increase of 6.6% from the August 31st total of 6,990,000 shares. Approximately 4.2% of the company’s stock are short sold. Based on an average daily volume of 1,600,000 shares, the short-interest ratio is presently 4.7 days.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several research firms have commented on GDS. Nomura Securities raised shares of GDS to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Monday, August 26th. Bank of America increased 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. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada raised GDS from a “sector perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and raised their price objective for the company from $13.00 to $14.00 in a research note on Monday, July 8th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, one has assigned a hold rating, three have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $15.29.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On GDS

Hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the business. Creative Planning raised its stake in GDS by 10.3% during 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 last quarter. Vanguard Personalized Indexing Management LLC bought a new position in shares of GDS during the 2nd quarter worth about $108,000. Quadrature Capital Ltd acquired a new position in shares of GDS during the fourth quarter valued at about $107,000. Berylson Capital Partners LLC lifted its stake in shares of GDS by 23.0% in the fourth quarter. Berylson Capital Partners LLC now owns 115,000 shares of the company’s stock valued at $1,049,000 after buying an additional 21,500 shares during the period. Finally, Marshall Wace LLP bought a new stake in shares of GDS in the second quarter valued at about $203,000. 33.71% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

GDS Stock Performance

GDS stock traded up $1.98 on Tuesday, reaching $22.38. 2,142,481 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 1,625,357. The stock has a market cap of $4.26 billion, a PE ratio of -6.89 and a beta of 0.24. The firm has a fifty day moving average price of $15.03 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $10.85. GDS has a twelve month low of $5.01 and a twelve month high of $22.77. The company has a current ratio of 1.39, a quick ratio of 1.39 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.30.

GDS (NASDAQ:GDS) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, August 21st. The company reported ($0.18) earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of ($0.25) by $0.07. The business had revenue of $388.92 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $384.14 million. GDS had a negative return on equity of 9.10% and a negative net margin of 39.96%. Sell-side analysts anticipate that GDS will post -1.14 EPS 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.