SINA Annual Unaudited Financial report

February 25, Sina announced the fourth quarter as at December 31, 2013 and 2013 annual unaudited financial reports. Earnings showed that in the fourth quarter of 2013 Sina net revenue of 197 million U.S. dollars, an increase of 42%, net profit of 44.5 million U.S. dollars, year-on-year growth of about 1854.2%.

Sina's overall revenue for 2013 was $665.1 million, up 26% from the previous year, with a net profit of $45.1 million, or about 42.3% from last year's growth.

In the fourth quarter of last year, Sina Weibo revenue topped 70 million dollars for the first time and achieved 3 million U.S. dollars in operating profits. Among them, micro-blog advertising revenue reached 56 million U.S. dollars, an increase of 163%, the chain growth of more than 28%, and not advertising business revenue reached 15.4 million U.S. dollars, the year-on-year growth of 114%, the chain growth of nearly 60%. It is understood that Weibo's so-called non-advertising revenue includes data authorization services, as well as other fee-based services such as microblogging game revenue sharing and Weibo membership fees.

In the fourth quarter of last year's net revenue of 197 million trillion, Weibo's revenue accounted for 36.2% of the total revenue.

In advertising, Sina said that the current Sina Weibo has established a brand-oriented customers, small and medium-sized enterprises and Taobao business complete advertising product system, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises and Taobao business market development. In the fourth quarter of last year, advertising based on micro-blogging continued to grow, with revenues rising by more than 70% per cent over the previous quarter, compared with a 50% increase in the number of customers.

The key driver of non advertising performance is the data services business from Weibo. "This is the first time we've talked about data service business. Chao, chairman and CEO of Sina, said in a financial analyst meeting that micro-blogging would be an important source of data from the perspective of user behavior data, which would benefit the partners on the microblogging platform in terms of the accuracy of information sharing.

However, Chao also acknowledged that Sina Weibo's user growth is slowing. "Daily active Users (DAU) year-on-year growth of 36%, the chain 4.2%, respectively, Sina Weibo since the establishment of the lowest year-on-year and the chain growth." "Despite the slowing growth, Sina Weibo users are still growing," Chao said.

Mr. Chao said Sina, in 2014, had focused its main goals and concerns on user growth and user activity as a result of the slowing growth of Weibo users. "In the first quarter, we have taken a number of measures, such as working with TV programs and launching a variety of activities to increase user activity." "If we take a reasonable approach and increase our investment, we will be able to keep Sina Weibo growing," Chao said.

February 24, according to foreign media reports, people familiar with the situation said Sina Weibo plans to launch an IPO in the NYSE, to raise 500 million U.S. dollars, is expected to be completed in the second quarter of this year, and Sina has selected Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse as the underwriter of the IPO.

Although Sina still said it is inconvenient to comment on this, but the news seems to have become a certainty, and the earnings of Sina Weibo revealed that the earnings, Sina may really start to go to New York to talk about a "Chinese version of Twitter" story. It is understood that last year, Twitter launched a public fund-raising 1 billion U.S. dollars, the current market value of more than 30 billion U.S. dollars.

On a commercial basis, Twitter and Sina Weibo all use advertising as their biggest source of revenue. Throughout the 2013, advertising accounted for as much as 87% of Twitter's overall revenue, and Sina Weibo's advertising revenue accounted for 80%. But mobile advertising, which accounted for up to 75% of Twitter's total revenue in the four quarter last year, has only just begun to commercialize its mobile-side.

Zhang, the chief executive of the media, told the 21st century economic reporter that for more than 70% of the current active users are from mobile-side Sina Weibo, in order to have more stories to say after the IPO, there is also a need to accelerate the pace of wireless commercialization.