Sina stocks rise on profits news

The share price of Sina Corp rose today (February 25th) following the release of the company's latest financial results.

It revealed it made a net profit of $44.5 million (£26.7 million) in the October-to-December period, which was up from $2.4 million a year ago.

Sina Corp, which owns the social networking site Weibo, stated that advertising revenues at the site rose to $56 million during the fourth quarter. This was a 163 per cent increase from a year earlier.

"The strong performance of Weibo's advertising and value-added services in the fourth quarter allowed us to end 2013 with strong top line and bottom line growth," said Charles Chao, chief executive of Sina.

However, figures indicate the number of users on Weibo is dropping, so the future may have a different outlook for the company. Data revealed by the China Internet Network Information Center in its annual report showed that almost 28 million people abandoned Weibo last year.

Weibo growth

Mr Chao stated that the firm "will continue to focus on growing Weibo's user base and user engagement" in the coming year.

Weibo is the largest social networking site in China and has become increasingly popular among advertisers in the last 12 months. The site allows users to post short messages, similar to how Twitter works in the western world. Advertisers are increasingly turning to the internet to reach the growing middle classes in the Asian nation.

It is also being reported that an initial public offering could be launched by Weibo in the coming year, which would raise hundreds of millions of dollars for Sina if it was to be pushed through.

Sina's latest results showed that its income from operations for the fourth quarter of 2013 was $27.4 million, which was compared to $5.6 million for the same period last year.

Stocks in the firm rose on the back of the news, climbing by more than four per cent on the back of the release of the new financial data.

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