KongZhong Shares Plunged: What You Need to Know

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

What: Shares of Chinese mobile services company KongZhong (Nasdaq: KONG  ) dove as much as 12% in intraday trading today as investors reacted to the company's third-quarter earnings.

So what: Apparently investors didn't see much in the way of fun and games from KongZhong's third-quarter numbers. Revenue for the quarter was higher than expected, but that was undercut by the fact that costs ate away at the higher sales and the company's $0.03 in per-share profit fell just short of analysts' estimates. The company's projection for fourth-quarter revenue also fell short of what Wall Street was hoping for.

Now what: Investors can still find reasons to invest in KongZhong. High on the list is that the company has very little debt and a huge $134 million cash pile. On the flip side, though, the company does play in a highly competitive space against the likes of SINA (Nasdaq: SINA  ) , Sohu.com (Nasdaq: SOHU  ) , and even the massive China Mobile (NYSE: CHL  ) , and hasn't shown itself to be an industry leader. KongZhong's cash certainly makes the stock more of a value than it would appear at first glance, but I find it pretty hard to get excited about the company backing up that stock.

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