By Rick Aristotle Munarriz
November 13, 2007
Recommended (2)
If you want to cash in on the economic boom in China, have you thought about playing the job market? You can do exactly that through 51job (Nasdaq: JOBS), the company behind the 51job Weekly employment classifieds publication that serves nearly two dozen Chinese provinces.
The company posted third-quarter results last night. Revenue climbed 22% to hit $29.4 million. 51job scored a profit of $0.13 a share, or $0.18 per share before share-based compensation and a currency-related hit. The bottom-line results are essentially flat with last year's performance. (Seeking last quarter's earnings results, too?)
It may not be the kind of titillating performance one sees with faster-growing Chinese companies like search engine leader Baidu.com (Nasdaq: BIDU), or with plays in online gaming and travel, but this is still a great story.
The number of job listings in the weekly publication continues to grow. It's actually growing its listings at a healthier 37% clip than its print-based revenue growth of 16% as 51job delves deeper into lower-paying developing cities.
The company is growing quicker on the online side of its business. That is a natural, given the growing Internet penetration within the country. 51job isn't alone in cyberspace. It has to compete against ChinaHR.com -- which Monster (Nasdaq: MNST) partly owns -- and China Career Builder as a hub for jobseekers. Thankfully, there are plenty of leads to go around.
Things are definitely going better in China than they are stateside, where Monster and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) HotJobs -- and even career-centric community sites like Dice (NYSE: DHX) and Jupitermedia (Nasdaq: JUPM) -- are battling it out in a cutthroat market.
We are entering a seasonally sleepy quarter for workforce recruitment in China. The company is looking to earn between $0.13 a share and $0.15 a share in adjusted profits on $27.4 million to $28.7 million in revenue. It may be a sequential dip, but Wall Street is looking for a profit of just $0.11 a share on $26.3 million on the top line.
So let's just say that 51job is acing its job interview. It may not be the speediest potential hire, but it's clearly dependable and ready to work.
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