It's OK if you haven't heard of SouFun Holdings (Nasdaq: SFUN ) before.
The operator of a leading real estate and home furnishings portal in China wasn't even public until two months ago.
However, the stock has more than doubled off of September's IPO price of $42.50. Going by the market's healthy reaction to SouFun's spectacular quarter yesterday, it may not be a stranger for too much longer.
Sure, we've all heard about the real estate bubble. Speculative buyers have forced the government into tighter mortgage requirements for those seeking to own additional homesteads.
The sector itself has cooled off, and it's obvious from the public players that toil away in the realty space. Developer Xinyuan Real Estate (NYSE: XIN ) is trading for half of its book value. Leading real estate agency E-House (NYSE: EJ ) and web-based data provider China Real Estate Information (Nasdaq: CRIC ) are trading lower year-to-date, and both companies are expected to post lower profits this year than they did in 2009.
It's against this gloomy backdrop that SouFun is turning heads in its first quarter as a public company.
SouFun's third quarter was superb. Revenue soared 83% to $57.4 million. Adjusted net income -- important because SouFun booked a huge tax benefit a year earlier -- soared 95% to $19.7 million, or $0.98 per ADS.
SouFun's flagship marketing services came in strong, and listing services revenue more than doubled.
As I've said before, sometimes the prettiest stocks are in the ugliest of places.
Unfortunately, SouFun isn't as small as one would think for a stock that only had eight ratings in Motley Fool CAPS. With the ADS equivalent of 20.2 million shares, we're talking about a company that's approaching a market cap of $1.9 billion after yesterday's nearly 10% pop.
Despite ridiculously impressive net margins of 34% in the third quarter, this is still a dot-com targeting $200 million to $205 million in revenue this year.
Some pretty interesting web-savvy Chinese companies have gone public in recent months. ChinaCache (Nasdaq: CCIH ) is a provider of Internet-based business content and application delivery services. HiSoft (Nasdaq: HSFT ) specializes in IT outsourcing. Ambow Education (Nasdaq: AMBO ) blends hands-on education with online tutoring.
It's important to pay attention to all of Mr. Market's foreign debutantes, because as SouFun shows, you can't judge an IPO by its sector.
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