SINA: Warrior Princess

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8

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New media mogul SINA (Nasdaq: SINA) is doing just fine. Thanks for asking.

The company posted yet another blowout quarter last night. Revenue rocketed 64% higher to $105.4 million. Earnings on a reported basis inched 28% higher to $0.36 a share. Back out stock-based compensation and amortization-related accounting hits, and earnings spiked 40% to $0.44 a share.

It is on that adjusted basis that analysts were looking for SINA to earn just $0.41 a share on $102.7 million in revenue. SINA wins? Big deal! China's Web darling has clocked in ahead of Wall Street's profit targets in each of the past 11 quarters.

SINA fared well on both of fronts, with ad revenue leading a 66% year-over-year gain and mobile value-added services coming through with a 63% improvement.

If sluggish stateside performance of online companies that aren't named Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has you down, have you looked into China lately? SINA's spurt isn't an anomaly. Let's go over the year-over-year revenue spurts that some of the country's leading new media companies have delivered.

Online Revenue Growth

Q3

SINA

66%

Focus Media (Nasdaq: FMCN)

67%

Baidu.com (Nasdaq: BIDU)

85%

NetEase.com (Nasdaq: NTES)

32%

Sohu.com (Nasdaq: SOHU)

62%

Imagine how great it would be if there were five stateside dot-com bellwethers speeding around the track like that?

SINA's guidance calls for a sequential top-line dip in the current quarter. It sees fourth-quarter revenue coming in between $98 million to $101 million. Wall Street is cool with that -- it was already perched at the low end of that range. Then again, if SINA continues its conservative low-balling ways, don't be surprised if we're back here in three months discussing how SINA has beat the pros' expectations in a dozen consecutive quarters.

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Focus Media Holding is a Motley Fool Global Gains selection. Netease.com, Focus Media Holding, and Baidu.com are Motley Fool Rule Breakers picks. SINA is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation. Try any of our Foolish newsletters today, free for 30 days.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz has been a fan of China's high-margin online stocks for a long time. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Related Tickers

11/10/2009 1:16 PM
BIDU $423.50 Down -2.37 -0.56%
Baidu.com, Inc. (A… CAPS Rating: **
FMCN $12.81 Down -0.23 -1.76%
Focus Media Holdin… CAPS Rating: *****
GOOG $566.61 Up +4.10 +0.73%
Google, Inc. CAPS Rating: ***
NTES $41.52 Down -0.48 -1.14%
NetEase.com, Inc.… CAPS Rating: ****
SINA $40.97 Down -1.07 -2.55%
SINA CAPS Rating: ***
SOHU $55.58 Down -2.29 -3.95%
Sohu.com, Inc. CAPS Rating: ****

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