China's 51job (Nasdaq: JOBS) is getting pretty good at this quarterly performance review. The company behind the job-listings website and the 51job Weekly employment classifieds publication, which serves nearly two dozen Chinese provinces, delivered another strong quarter last night.
Revenue climbed 18% to $33.7 million. Earnings, after backing out share-based compensation and a foreign exchange hit, dipped by 8% to $0.20 per American depositary receipt. Mr. Market was looking for an adjusted profit of $0.13 a share on $30.9 million in revenue.
It's a good time to recruit workers in China. Even with recent measures curbing the amount that companies can spend in workforce recruitment, 51job is in the right place in a country that is growing as quickly as its employment opportunities.
The popularity of 51job's employment listings will continue to grow, in part because China's dynamics will change as it evolves into an emerging powerhouse, with service and technology jobs replacing agricultural ones.
There are many ways beyond 51job to play that workforce explosion. New Oriental Education (NYSE: EDU) is giving China's youth the skills to succeed in a more global economy through an enhanced curriculum, while companies such as ChinaEdu (Nasdaq: CEDU), Chinacast (Nasdaq: CAST), ATA (Nasdaq: ATAI), and Noah Education (NYSE: NED) are making knowledge-absorption easier with computerized and e-learning solutions.
Nor is 51job alone in posting the want ads. It bumps up against China Career Builder and Monster's (Nasdaq: MNST) partly owned ChinaHR.com.
But there's plenty of room for more than one winner. In a country with 1.3 billion people, opportunities abound to hook up employers with employees.
Still, 51job will have its near-term challenges. The company is investigating a shady third-party contractor, and this week's earthquake will carry an economic toll. However, the company's outlook for its current quarter, in which it's calling for an adjusted profit of $0.15 to $0.19 per ADS, is once again ahead of Wall Street's expectations.
Nice job, 51job. Are you hiring Wall Street analysts, too? The current batch can't seem to keep up with you these days.
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