What: Shares of ChinaCache International Holdings (CCIH) jumped 13% early Thursday after the company released better-than-expected fourth quarter and full year 2013 results.
So what: Quarterly revenue increased 50.8% year over year to $56.1 million, exceeding the top end of ChinaCache's guidance by 14%. As a result, ChinaCache's adjusted net loss narrowed to $0.8 million from $3.2 million in the same year-ago period.
For the full year 2013, revenue increased 35.6% to $182.2 million, which translated to an adjusted net loss of $2.6 million, or roughly $0.11 per share. By comparison, analysts were looking for a 2013 loss of $0.14 per share on sales of $174.07 million.
Now what: CEO Song Wang weighed in: "China's thriving Internet industry continues to support our growth. Today, we are serving more than 330 million desktop and mobile Internet users, and supporting more than 2.6 billion webpage displays daily through our network. In 2013, we celebrated our 15th anniversary as the leader in China's CDN industry and we are working to expand our global footprint."
To be sure, ChinaCache has been busy expanding its moat: Just last month, shares skyrocketed for several consecutive days after the company announced a partnership with Server Farm Reality aimed at helping multinational businesses host their cloud services in China. In January, the stock also rose following a global expansion of ChinaCache's previous deal with China Eastern Airlines.
Finally, today's results serve as welcome relief for shareholders, who last quarter endured a hefty drop when ChinaCache turned in disappointing third- quarter results, primarily the result of accruing a one-time bad-debt provision during a contract renewal "disagreement" with China Mobile.
In the end, given ChinaCache's position at the front of China's burgeoning Internet market, I think there should be little preventing the stock from continuing to reward investors from here.
