Weibo Corporation (NASDAQ:WB) has posted second-quarter financials that beat estimates on earnings but missed the mark on revenue, sending its shares lower in Thursday premarket trading.
The Chinese social media company, known for the microblogging website Sina Weibo, reported a 2% decrease in net revenues to US$440.2 million for the three months to June 30, 2023, below analysts’ consensus of US$441 million.
It highlighted a steady recovery in its advertising business, which contributed to an improvement in its operating margin to 28% from 21% a year earlier.
Earnings per share (EPS) jumped 183% to US$0.34, while adjusted EPS rose 15% to US$0.53, beating Street estimates by 2 cents.
"We are pleased with the recovery of our business and improvement of our operating efficiency this quarter,” commented CEO Gaofei Wang.
"During this quarter, our user community experienced continuous healthy growth, with ongoing execution of effective channel and operational strategies.”
Monthly active Weibo users reached 599 million in June, a net addition of about 17 million from a year earlier, with 95% of users joining on their mobile devices.
Average daily active users were 258 million in June, a year-over-year net addition of about 5 million.
Wang continued: “For content ecosystem, on top of solid growth of traffic and content consumption around Weibo's advantageous areas, such as entertainment and hot trends, we also beefed up our investment in key vertical areas, in the hope of reinforcing our comprehensive content ecosystem.”
Ahead of the US market open, Weibo’s shares were down 1.7%. Its Hong Kong-listed shares closed 2.3% higher ahead of the results release.
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