Head-To-Head Survey: DoubleVerify (NYSE:DV) and VNET Group (NASDAQ:VNET)

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

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for VNET Group and DoubleVerify, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
VNET Group	0	0	4	2	3.33
DoubleVerify	1	11	12	0	2.46

VNET Group presently has a consensus price target of $9.30, suggesting a potential upside of 31.36%. DoubleVerify has a consensus price target of $20.68, suggesting a potential upside of 53.95%. Given DoubleVerify’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe DoubleVerify is more favorable than VNET Group.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares VNET Group and DoubleVerify”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
VNET Group	$8.26 billion	0.22	-$372.38 million	($0.01)	-708.00
DoubleVerify	$656.85 million	3.32	$71.47 million	$0.31	43.32

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

Institutional & Insider Ownership

72.8% of VNET Group shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 97.3% of DoubleVerify shares are owned by institutional investors. 12.1% of VNET Group shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 3.6% of DoubleVerify shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Risk and Volatility

VNET Group has a beta of 0.15, suggesting that its share price is 85% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, DoubleVerify has a beta of 1.04, suggesting that its share price is 4% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
VNET Group	-28.54%	-5.68%	-1.27%
DoubleVerify	10.33%	5.99%	5.18%

Summary

DoubleVerify beats VNET Group on 11 of the 15 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 DoubleVerify

DoubleVerify Holdings, Inc. provides a software platform for digital media measurement, and data analytics in the United States and internationally. The company provides solutions to advertisers that enable advertisers to increase the effectiveness and quality and return on their digital advertising investments. It offers DV Authentic Ad, a metric of digital media quality, which evaluates the existence of fraud-free, brand-suitable, viewability, and geography for each digital ad; DV Authentic Attention that provides actionable, and comprehensive data to drive campaign performance; and Custom Contextual solution, which allows advertisers to match their ads to relevant content to maximize user engagement and drive campaign performance. In addition, the company provides DV Publisher suite, a solution for digital publishers to manage revenue and increase inventory yield by improving video delivery, identifying lost or unfilled sales, and aggregate data across all inventory sources; and DV Pinnacle, a service and analytics platform user interface that allows its customers to adjust and deploy controls for their media plan and track campaign performance metrics across channels, formats, and devices. Further, it offers software solutions are integrated in the digital advertising ecosystem, including programmatic platforms, social media channels, and digital publishers. It serves brands, publishers, and other supply-side customers covering various industry verticals, including consumer packaged goods, financial services, telecommunications, technology, automotive, and healthcare. The company was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in New York, New York.