Royal Bank of Canada Upgrades GDS (NASDAQ:GDS) to “Outperform”

Royal Bank of Canada upgraded shares of GDS (NASDAQ:GDS) from a sector perform rating to an outperform rating in a research note published on Monday morning, MarketBeat reports. Royal Bank of Canada currently has $14.00 price objective on the stock, up from their prior price objective of $13.00.

GDS has been the subject of a number of other research reports. JPMorgan Chase & Co. dropped their price objective on GDS from $12.00 to $7.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a report on Thursday, March 28th. StockNews.com upgraded shares of GDS to a sell rating in a report on Thursday, March 21st.

GDS Stock Down 6.2 %

Shares of GDS stock opened at $11.43 on Monday. The stock has a market cap of $2.18 billion, a P/E ratio of -3.56 and a beta of 0.21. The company’s fifty day simple moving average is $9.10 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $7.73. The company has a quick ratio of 1.13, a current ratio of 1.13 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.25. GDS has a 52 week low of $5.01 and a 52 week high of $14.24.

GDS (NASDAQ:GDS) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, May 22nd. The company reported ($0.27) earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.33) by $0.06. GDS had a negative net margin of 41.33% and a negative return on equity of 8.70%. The firm had revenue of $363.89 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $366.92 million. Analysts predict that GDS will post -1.25 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On GDS

Several hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board lifted its stake in shares of GDS by 0.4% in the 1st quarter. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board now owns 9,713,325 shares of the company’s stock valued at $64,594,000 after purchasing an additional 33,978 shares during the period. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. boosted its stake in shares of GDS by 16.7% during the 4th quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now owns 5,404,486 shares of the company’s stock worth $49,289,000 after acquiring an additional 773,378 shares in the last quarter. Baupost Group LLC MA purchased a new stake in shares of GDS during the 1st quarter worth about $17,290,000. Massachusetts Financial Services Co. MA grew its position in shares of GDS by 4.1% during the 4th quarter. Massachusetts Financial Services Co. MA now owns 1,696,842 shares of the company’s stock valued at $15,475,000 after acquiring an additional 66,456 shares during the period. Finally, Cerity Partners LLC purchased a new position in shares of GDS in the 4th quarter valued at about $13,928,000. 33.71% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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.