CHINESE Internet portal Sina.com posted a 39 percent increase in second-quarter earnings compared with a year ago on strong advertising sales, the Shanghai-based company said yesterday.
The growth came as Sina's alliance with Google and updated video services helped boost traffic that in turn attracted more ad spending.
Net income was US$14.5 million, or 25 US cents per share. Sales grew 11 percent to US$59.8 million, within the upper range of company forecasts, Sina said in a statement.
"Our second-quarter results demonstrate our strength in our core online advertising business," said Charles Chao, chief executive officer of Sina Corp.
The April-June period was the fifth consecutive quarter in which the company grew its online advertising business by 40 percent or more year on year.
Ads sales in the quarter jumped 40 percent from a year ago, beating previous expectation of up to US$41 million as the number of advertisers rose 11 percent.
Excluding the FIFA World Cup contribution in the second quarter last year, Sina's ad sales escalated 67 percent year on year, according to Morgan Stanley.
"Automobile, fast-moving consumer goods and financial services constituted the three key drivers for Sina's advertising growth," Morgan Stanley said in a research note after the earnings release.
"All these industries recorded triple-digit sales growth year on year, and advertising sales related to financial services booked 2.3 times the annual increase."
Sina, China's largest portal, is cutting spending on search services. It forged a strategic partnership with Google in June for Web searches, news and advertising as its own search engine, iask.com, was losing share to China's search market leader Baidu.com.