Sina net income more than triples on year as equity sale offsets staff, infrastructure investments on Weibo, CEO says
Weibo, the popular Chinese microblogging platform, expanded its user base by 13.6 percent in the second quarter as owner Sina increased investment in staff and infrastructure on the service informally referred to as ‘China’s Twitter’.
On a conference call with analysts, Sina CEO Charles Chao said the number of Weibo users grew to 368 mn as of the end of June from 324 mn users at the end of March, while the average number of daily active users increased 21 percent to 36.5 mn.
He added that 69 percent of Weibo’s users accessed the platform from mobile devices, increasing from 64 percent in June, and the average daily active user spent an hour per day on the site, a slight increase from June.
Toward the end of the third quarter, Chao said, Sina will launch version five of Weibo, with ‘significant changes to our existing personal profile page and which allows users the ability to share content with close circles privately’.
‘We expect our advertising revenue growth will accelerate in the third quarter,’ Chao added.
‘As social media and advertising is relatively new in China, it takes time to educate the market. We will continue to invest heavily in the Weibo platform in the year 2012.
‘Our primary goal for this year is still to grow the user base through product innovations and user experience improvement.’
Weibo use soared during the Olympic Games and established the platform’s lead in China over competitors such as Tencent Weibo and Sohu Weibo, Chao commented, establishing the platform as ‘the number one platform for news about the Olympic games in China.’
Sina’s overall net income more than tripled in the second quarter from a year earlier, to $33.2 mn from $10 mn, led by a gain of $45.3 mn from the sale of a stake in a real estate firm, the company said in a press release.
Sina boosted spending on staff and infrastructure at Weibo, accounting for most of the increase in non-GAAP operating expenditures to $66.8 mn in the second quarter of this year, from $56.4 mn a year earlier.
