Sina Corporation (SINA), one of the leading Chinese digital portals, will report earnings this evening after the close of trading, and the Street is forecasting revenues of $189.5 million and a loss of $0.05 per American Depositary Share. For the June quarter, current estimates are for the company to report revenue of $219.5 million and a profit of $0.20 per ADS. And for full-year 2016, the sellsiders are expecting revenues of $$944 million and earnings of $0.91 per share. On the March conference call for fourth-quarter and full-year 2015 results, Sina had guided 2016 revenues to a range between $850 million and $950 million.
There are two major transactions of note involving SINA, recently, which have mostly been overlooked by investors, that have piqued my interest in SINA on the long side.
One is the $456.4 million invested by Charles Chao, Sina President - for 11 million shares, or a price per share of $41.49 -- in the middle of last year.
Second is the company's various investments in the likes of E-House (EJ), Weibo (WB) and most recently in newly listed Yintech Investment Holdings (YIN), a Chinese company that provides trading and services on the online spot commodities trading markets. YIN went public late last month with an ADS offering of 7.5 million shares priced at $13.50 per share. At the same time, YIN closed on a private placement with MeMeStar Holdings, another wholly owned subsidiary of Sina, for $10 million in exchange for 14.815 million shares. (EJ will soon be delisted off our exchanges in a going-private transaction at $6.85 a share.)
SINA ended 2015 with $2.4 billion in cash and equivalents and also announced a $500 million buyback.
Incidentally, Weibo will also be reporting earnings after the close today, and Street estimates are for revenue of $114 million and earnings of $0.04 per share for the March quarter. For the current quarter, the Street is estimating revenue of $135.6 million and earnings of $0.09 per share. For 2016, the sellsiders are forecasting revenue of $606 million and earnings of $0.51 per share.
I am not currently long any of these names, but I am considering a position in Sina, Weibo or both, before the close of trading today -- and before their respective earnings reports, tonight.
Good luck, whichever way you are positioned going into these earnings reports -- long, short or agnostic.
