[科技前沿]新浪業績不佳 遭投資者冷遇

Sina Leaves Investors Cold

The good news for Chinese Internet portal Sina is that it is well-positioned to ride a recovery in the Chinese online-advertising market.

Unfortunately, judging from the company's second-quarter results, that recovery is still some way off. Advertising revenue dropped 11% from a year earlier, and net profit fell 41% in the June quarter.

This is admittedly a tough comparison because the Beijing Olympics last year spurred heavy ad spending.

But Sina's outlook wasn't particularly inspiring either. The company's financial chief described advertiser sentiment as 'still fragile,' and 'fluctuating on a month-by-month basis.'

It is going to take a significant clearing of this haziness for investors to back this stock. Shares are down nearly 30% over the past year, a dismal performance compared with other Chinese Internet plays: Search engine Baidu is up 5% in the same period, while diversified Internet company Tencent has jumped 71%.

At rival Internet portal , results have been cushioned from the downturn by substantial revenue from online gaming, a defensive sector that provides cheap and addictive entertainment to Chinese youth. There, analysts expect revenue to rise 21% this year.

At Sina, analysts expect no increase in sales, based on estimates tallied before the latest report.

Further clouding the outlook is Sina's planned $1.4 billion acquisition of a network that plays video ads in stores and office-building elevators. The deal, with Focus Media, has languished for nearly nine months, awaiting antitrust approval from the Commerce Ministry. It now may be scrapped or altered.

In short, it is difficult to know what the immediate future holds for Sina, in both its core online business or its foray into offline advertising.

Investors wanting to jump into China's Internet universe have plenty of other options.

中文入口網站新浪網(Sina)的好訊息是，它處於有利地位，可以借到中國網際網路廣告市場復甦的東風。

不幸的是，從該公司第二季度業績看，這番復甦尚需時日。廣告收入較上年同期下降11%，淨利潤下滑41%。

不可否認，與上年同期的比較本身就不合理，因為去年的北京奧運會刺激了大量廣告開支。

但新浪的前景也不是那麼令人鼓舞。該公司首席財務長說，廣告商的情緒還很脆弱，每個月都會出現起伏。

要讓投資者支援新浪的股票，就需要釐清這種不確定的狀態。過去一年新浪股價下跌近30%，與其他中國網際網路企業相比可以說黯然失色：搜尋引擎百度(Baidu)上漲5%，擁有多元化業務的網路公司騰訊(Tencent)大漲71%。

同為入口網站的競爭對手搜狐()因來自線上遊戲的可觀收入而得以緩衝低迷的形勢，線上遊戲是一個比較保險的領域，為中國年輕人提供成本低廉的娛樂，令他們沉溺其中。分析師預計搜狐今年收入將增長21%。

而對於新浪，分析師們根據最新報告發布前的估計，預期其銷售收入不會出現增長。

新浪以14億美元收購一家在商店和寫字樓電梯內播放視訊廣告的公司的計劃令新浪的前景進一步籠罩陰雲。與分眾傳媒的這樁交易已經拖了近9個月，等待商務部反壟斷部門的批准。現在這樁交易可能作廢或更改。

簡言之，在核心的網路業務和線下廣告兩方面，新浪近期的前景如何都難以確定。

想從中國廣闊的網際網路行業中分一杯羹的投資者還有許多其他選擇。

迪卡諾向投資者給出了一個方便的公式：蘋果明年每多售出100萬部手機，其每股收益將增加18到20美分。

據湯姆森金融公司（Thomson Financial）稱，華爾街目前預期蘋果2009財年每股收益為5.84美元，而2010年每股收益為6.79美元。