The Beijing Olympics may have ended, but China is still playing games. Online gaming pioneer Shanda Interactive (Nasdaq: SNDA) came through with yet another robust quarter.
Revenue grew by 48% to $122.1 million, while earnings clocked in at $0.56 per American depositary share. The bottom line fell, but only because Shanda booked a big one-time gain last year from selling its stake in SINA (Nasdaq: SINA). The showing exceeded the company's guidance. Wall Street also came up short, expecting a profit of just $0.51 a share for the second quarter.
If the numbers lead you to a dizzying deja vu moment, it only means that you were paying attention three months ago. Shanda also earned $0.56 a share during the first quarter, against an analysts' target of $0.51 a share.
Shanda has now topped the market's profit expectations in each of the past nine quarters. Is Shanda that good, or are Wall Street's finest that bad? The question is rhetorical, but Shanda's interactive success is not.
The company closed out the quarter with 4.2 million paying accounts. Flush with $513.2 million in cash and short-term investments -- or nearly $7 per ADS -- Shanda is positioned to weather any storm, or make the most of sector consolidation if it tires of its still-heady organic growth.
This summer, the company launched Shanda Literature, its initiative to cash in on online original literature in China. It's still in the early stages, but if Amazon.com's (Nasdaq: AMZN) Kindle is looking for a content distributor in China, it may want to have Shanda ready on speed dial.
Perhaps more importantly, Shanda lived up to the hype -- and in most cases outperformed -- its smaller rivals during a quarter that could have been challenging, given the Sichuan earthquake and the three-day mourning period that followed.
Perfect World (Nasdaq: PWRD) simply met expectations, while NetEase.com (Nasdaq: NTES) and Giant Interactive (NYSE: GA) barely beat the pros. The9 (Nasdaq: NCTY) blew past its projections, but concerns about the company's licensed flagship property held the stock back.
In other words, the booming industry saved the best for last. It is why Shanda shareholders were rewarded with a 7% pop at the open this morning. With Shanda -- like so many of its peers -- fetching an earnings multiple in the pre-teens, there is little reason to expect the good times to end as long as China keeps playing along.
Other games to play:
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