Analyzing VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET) and Pinterest (NYSE:PINS)

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

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current recommendations and price targets for VNET Group and Pinterest, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
VNET Group	0	0	1	0	3.00
Pinterest	0	9	18	0	2.67

VNET Group presently has a consensus price target of $2.85, suggesting a potential upside of 43.94%. Pinterest has a consensus price target of $42.60, suggesting a potential upside of 13.41%. Given VNET Group’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities research analysts plainly believe VNET Group is more favorable than Pinterest.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

72.8% of VNET Group shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 88.8% of Pinterest shares are owned by institutional investors. 12.1% of VNET Group shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 7.1% of Pinterest shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Volatility and Risk

VNET Group has a beta of -0.35, suggesting that its share price is 135% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Pinterest has a beta of 0.97, suggesting that its share price is 3% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
VNET Group	-39.32%	-15.69%	-3.58%
Pinterest	4.64%	5.93%	5.05%

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares VNET Group and Pinterest’s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
VNET Group	$1.04 billion	0.49	-$372.38 million	($2.64)	-0.75
Pinterest	$3.06 billion	8.40	-$35.61 million	$0.21	178.87

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

Summary

Pinterest beats VNET Group on 11 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 Pinterest

Pinterest, Inc. operates as a visual search and discovery platform in the United States and internationally. Its platform allows people to find ideas, such as recipes, home and style inspiration, and others; and to search, save, and shop the ideas. The company was formerly known as Cold Brew Labs Inc. and changed its name to Pinterest, Inc. in April 2012. Pinterest, Inc. was incorporated in 2008 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.