Sina, Weibo report strong Q2 financial results

Chinese internet company Sina Corp and its social media platform Weibo Corp both reported strong second quarter growth on Wednesday, according to the two Nasdaq-listed companies' financial reports.

The net revenue of Sina in Q2 as of June 30 climbed to $537.4 million from $358.9 million in the same period last year, a 49.7 percent year-on-year increase, with Weibo's net revenue totaling $426.6 million, growing by 68 percent year-on-year from $253.4 million in the same period last year.

Net income attributable to Weibo was $140.9 million in Q2, up 92 percent year-on-year, while Sina generated $35.1 million, up 50 percent year-on-year.

"We had another good quarter. Weibo continued to record healthy growth in both user base and monetization despite more intensified competition. For Sina businesses, we continued to see robust growth in user scale of Sina mobile apps, which bodes well for improved mobile monetization of Sina media," Cao Guowei, CEO and chairman of Sina, said during the company's earnings conference call for Q2.

Wang Gaofei, CEO of Weibo, said during Weibo's earnings conference call that the platform, with the number of its daily active users (DAUs) and monthly active users (MAUs) growing steadily, has strong growth momentum in its business.

The number of Weibo's DAUs and MAUs totaled 190 million and 431 million in June respectively. Wang said the recent FIFA World Cup has contributed to Weibo's strong user growth and user engagement.

"As a leading social media platform with a full spectrum of media formats in China, we believe Weibo's larger user scale, enriched content ecosystem and strong social marketing capabilities will put us in a unique position to take advantage of the marketing budget shift toward mobile, social and video in the Chinese mobile internet market," Wang said.

Weibo's ad and marketing revenue reached $369.9 million in Q2, an increase of 69 percent year-on-year, driven by which Sina's advertising revenue expanded to $454.1 million by 54 percent year-on-year.

In addition, the non-advertising revenue of Sina climbed 31 percent to $83.3 million in Q2, owing to higher Weibo membership fees, live broadcasting, and Sina's fintech businesses.

Weibo estimates its net revenues to be between $465 million and $475 million, or increase by 49 percent to 42 percent year-on-year for the third quarter this year.