Head to Head Analysis: Sound Group (NASDAQ:SOGP) vs. VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET)

Sound Group (NASDAQ:SOGP) and VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) are both consumer discretionary companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, valuation, analyst recommendations, risk, dividends, profitability and institutional ownership.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

1.6% of Sound Group shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 72.8% of VNET Group shares are held by institutional investors. 25.2% of Sound Group shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 12.1% of VNET Group shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current recommendations for Sound Group and VNET Group, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Sound Group	0	0	0	0	0.00
VNET Group	0	0	5	2	3.29

VNET Group has a consensus price target of $7.98, indicating a potential downside of 29.88%. Given VNET Group’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe VNET Group is more favorable than Sound Group.

Risk and Volatility

Sound Group has a beta of 1.62, indicating that its stock price is 62% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, VNET Group has a beta of 0.07, indicating that its stock price is 93% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Sound Group	N/A	N/A	N/A
VNET Group	-28.54%	-5.68%	-1.27%

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Sound Group and VNET Group”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Sound Group	$1.77 billion	0.01	-$17.84 million	N/A	N/A
VNET Group	$8.26 billion	0.35	-$372.38 million	($0.01)	-1,138.00

Sound Group has higher earnings, but lower revenue than VNET Group.

Summary

VNET Group beats Sound Group on 7 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Sound Group

Sound Group Inc. operates as an audio-centric social and entertainment company. It focuses on building audio platform to connect and communicate. The company, through its product portfolio and in-house technologies, caters to user interest in audio entertainment and social networking. The company was formerly known as LIZHI INC. and changed its name to Sound Group Inc. in January 2024. Sound Group Inc. was founded in 2010 and is based in Singapore.

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.