Sina banks on Wiebo, spooks investors

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Agencies: Nov 16 2012, 17:32 IST

will become one of the major forms of (Weibo) advertising going forward, said Chao, adding that the product will be effective also on mobile platforms, allowing Sina to tap into Weibo's growth on mobile devices.

Q3 PROFIT BEAT

For the third quarter, Sina's net profit was $9.9 million compared with a loss of $336.3 million a year earlier, and slighly ahead of analysts' expectations of $7.5 million.

Sina's quarterly advertising revenue rose 19 percent to $120.6 million, while non-advertising revenue rose 9 percent to $31.8 million.

The company started monetizing Weibo by offering special services to business accounts and selling VIP memberships to regular users earlier this year.

For its mobile-value-added-services business, Sina said it expects revenue to continue to decline due to new regulatory policies.

The company was also affected by a spat between Japan and China over islands in the East China Sea as Japanese automakers cut back on advertising in China. Chao said he expected the impact to last into the fourth quarter.

It did have an impact on our third quarter as well as our fourth quarter. We did see cancellations from customers related to Japanese automobiles in the month of September and it impacted the fourth quarter (too), Chao said.

Sina shares fell 6.74 percent to $49.52 in extended trading. They closed at $53.10 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.

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