Shares of search and internet company Sogou Inc. (NYSE: SOGO)
fell 4.15% during pre-market trading hours on Monday, after it issued
weaker-than-expected third-quarter guidance. Meanwhile, the company reported second-quarter
results that were better than street expectation.
The Chinese company’s Q2 revenue inched up 1% to $303.6 million, slightly higher than analysts’ estimate of $301.72 million. The company added that in RMD terms, revenue rose 8%.
Driven by the strong growth in auction-based pay-for-click
services, the company witnessed a 2% growth in search and search-related
revenues to $276.2 million. However, weakness in sales of smart products pulled
down other revenues 11%.
On an adjusted basis, the company earned 7 cents per share, one
cent higher than the street view, helped by an income tax benefit of $1.4
million during the quarter.
Sogou Mobile Keyboard had 453 million daily average users at the end of the second quarter, up 17% year-over-year.
READ: Google trails at fifth spot in the Chinese search engine market
CEO Xiaochuan Wang
said, “Leveraging our core AI capabilities, we made significant progress in
upgrading the smart hardware business, with new AI-enabled products launched
and more in the pipeline. Going forward, we believe the steady growth in our
core search business, coupled with the solid progress in the big data and
recommendation service and smart hardware, will support sustainable expansion
across our businesses.”
For the third quarter, Sogou expects total revenues to be in the range $304 million to $314 million, representing a 10% to 14% increase year-over-year. This was, however, weaker than the street expectation of $318 million.