3 Stocks That Blew the Market Away

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Every week, I take a look at a few companies that surpassed their profit targets. Leaving Wall Street's pros with quizzical looks on their faces can be a good thing. It usually means that the companies have more in the tank than analysts figured and capital appreciation often follows.

Let's take a look at a few companies that humbled the prognosticators over the past few trading days.

We can start with Gmarket (Nasdaq: GMKT). South Korea's leading online marketplace saw second-quarter earnings climb to $0.30 a share, about 66% higher than last year's showing and well ahead of the $0.21 a share that analysts were looking for. The company was assisted by a tax break during the period, but would have easily smoked past the pros even without it.

Gmarket is keeping ahead of both Mr. Market and eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) in the Web-savvy nation. It has now beaten Wall Street's guesstimates -- by double-digit percentage margins -- in each of the past three quarters.

Sohu.com (Nasdaq: SOHU) is another topper. The Chinese new media company can thank a hot online computer game for its runaway success. Quarterly profits soared sevenfold, to $1.02 a share, completely obliterating the market's expectations of net income clocking in at just $0.67 a share.

Sohu isn't the first nongaming Chinese stock to stumble into greatness in this niche. NetEase.com (Nasdaq: NTES) diversified out of its Internet portal and wireless content delivery services several years ago to become a market leader in Chinese Web games. Even enterprise software specialist CDC (Nasdaq: CHINA) is giving it a go these days.

Finally, we have IAC (Nasdaq: IACI) hitting it out of the park. Barry Diller's media conglomerate earned an adjusted $0.35 a share in what may be its last quarter as a stand-alone company. IAC is gearing up to split its empire into five distinct entities. IAC's bottom-line showing beat out analyst projections of $0.31 a share.

So, keep watching the companies that lap expectations. Over time, it will be a rewarding experience for investors as the market rewards the overachievers. That's the kind of surprise we look for in the Motley Fool Rule Breakers newsletter service.

Come back next Monday to learn about more stocks that blew the market away.