Cheetah Mobile (NYSE:CMCM) vs. VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) Head-To-Head Analysis

VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) and Cheetah Mobile (NYSE:CMCM) are both computer and technology companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, earnings, valuation, analyst recommendations, risk, institutional ownership and dividends.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares VNET Group and Cheetah Mobile”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
VNET Group	$1.13 billion	2.66	$25.10 million	($0.30)	-37.33
Cheetah Mobile	$110.54 million	1.66	-$84.60 million	($2.02)	-2.99

VNET Group has higher revenue and earnings than Cheetah Mobile. VNET Group is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Cheetah Mobile, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for VNET Group and Cheetah Mobile, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
VNET Group	1	0	2	1	2.75
Cheetah Mobile	1	0	0	0	1.00

VNET Group currently has a consensus target price of $16.30, indicating a potential upside of 45.54%. Given VNET Group’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities research analysts plainly believe VNET Group is more favorable than Cheetah Mobile.

Profitability

This table compares VNET Group and Cheetah Mobile’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
VNET Group	-5.99%	-3.42%	-0.59%
Cheetah Mobile	-39.76%	-12.54%	-4.85%

Insider and Institutional Ownership

72.8% of VNET Group shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 0.4% of Cheetah Mobile shares are owned by institutional investors. 12.1% of VNET Group shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 17.1% of Cheetah Mobile shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

VNET Group beats Cheetah Mobile on 12 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About VNET Group

VNET Group, Inc., an investment holding company, provides hosting and related services in China. It offers managed hosting services consisting of managed retail services, such as colocation services that dedicate data center space to house customers' servers and networking equipment, as well as allow customers to lease partial or entire cabinets for their servers; interconnectivity services that allow customers to connect their servers; value-added services, including hybrid IT, bare metal, firewall, server load balancing, data backup and recovery, data center management, server management, and backup server services; cloud services that allow customers to run applications over the internet using IT infrastructure; and VPN Services that extend customers' private networks by setting up connections through the public internet. The company also provides server administration services, such as operating system support and assistance with updates, server monitoring, server backup and restoration, server security evaluation, firewall services, and disaster recovery services. It serves information technology and cloud services, communications and social networking, gaming and entertainment, e-commerce, automobile, financial services, and blue-chip and small-to-mid-sized enterprises; government agencies; individuals; and telecommunication carriers. The company was formerly known as 21Vianet Group, Inc. and changed its name to VNET Group, Inc. in October 2021. VNET Group, Inc. was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Beijing, the People's Republic of China.

About Cheetah Mobile

Cheetah Mobile Inc. along with its subsidiaries, engages in provision of internet services, artificial intelligence, and other services in the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Japan, and internationally. The company's internet products include Duba Anti-virus, an internet security application to protect users against known and unknown security threats and malicious applications; and Clean Master, a junk file cleaning, memory boosting, and privacy protection tool for mobile devices. It also offers value-added products, such as PC and mobile products, as well as wallpaper, office optimization software, and others; E-Coupon vending robot, a delivery and reception robot, which includes marketing campaigns and services; and multi-cloud management platform and overseas advertising agency service. In addition, the company provides mobile advertising services; duba.com personal start page that aggregates online resources and provides users access to their online destinations, such as online shopping, video, online game, travel, and local information; artificial intelligence and other services; and premium membership services. It serves mobile advertising networks and partners, e-commerce companies, mobile application developers, and mobile game developers, as well as individual customers. The company was formerly known as Kingsoft Internet Software Holdings Limited and changed its name to Cheetah Mobile Inc. in March 2014. Cheetah Mobile Inc. was incorporated in 2009 and is based in Beijing, the People's Republic of China.