Maintain Sina's stock buying rating, and increase the target share price from 96 US dollars to 104 dollars

Citigroup released its investment report today to maintain the "buy" rating of Sina (Nasda:sina), bringing its target share price from $96 to $104.

Sina's third-quarter earnings were Better-than-expected, with revenue of $185 million, up 22% per cent above Wall Street's expected $183 million. Diluted earnings per share of $0.42 trillion, above Wall Street's expected $0.32 trillion. Sina expects fourth-quarter revenues to reach $195 million trillion to $199 million trillion, up 40% to 43% per cent, up from Wall Street's expected $187 million trillion.

The cooperation between Weibo and Alibaba has been shown to be effective, mainly in two aspects. According to Sina's management, 48% of Weibo active users have linked their microblog accounts to their Taobao accounts. It is clear that Weibo will benefit from promotional activities such as "11.11".

In addition, Weibo has contributed 30% of the revenue to Sina, thus becoming the driving force for revenue growth. In the third quarter, Weibo revenue grew 128% per cent year-on-year. And Alibaba contributed nearly 50% of Weibo advertising revenue.

At the same time, the investment bank Oppenheimer also gave Sina shares a "buy" rating, with a net target price of 90 dollars.