Weibo’s stock gains after Q4 results top estimates

Chinese social media company Weibo Corporation (WB) announced its unaudited financial results for the fourth quarter of 2018 on Tuesday, beating estimates on both revenue and earnings and sending shares climbing by 3.4% during premarket hours.

Net revenues grew 28% year-over-year to $481.9 million. Advertising and marketing revenues grew 25% from the prior-year period, mainly driven by a 31% growth in revenues from small & medium-sized enterprises and key accounts. Value-added service revenues saw a growth of 44%, primarily due to incremental revenues from the newly-acquired live broadcasting business.

GAAP net income attributable to Weibo rose 27% year-over-year to $166.5 million, or $0.73 per share, while adjusted net income grew 26% to $183.6 million, or $0.80 per share.

Monthly active users (MAUs) stood at 462 million in December 2018, representing a net addition of approx. 70 million users on a year-over-year basis. Mobile MAUs comprised 93% of MAUs. Average daily active users (DAUs) were 200 million in December 2018, representing a net addition of around 28 million users on a year-over-year basis.

Gaofei Wang, CEO of Weibo, said, “Heading into 2019, Weibo will continue to invest in platform development in multi-dimension, reinforce social content ecosystem to empower content creators, and capture higher wallet share in digital advertising budget as well as diversify monetization opportunities in the long run.”

For the first quarter of 2019, Weibo expects net revenues of $395 million to $405 million, reflecting a growth of 20.5-23.5% year-over-year on a constant currency basis.

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