Tweeting The Sina Q4 2011 Earnings Call

• Posted by bbishop
• on February 27th, 2012

Sina reported disappointing Q4 2011 results and Q1 2012 guidance.

I tweeted the earnings call and have embedded some of my comments below. CEO Charles Chao did not sound confident and used the words “uncertain” and uncertainty” several times. The company is clearly concerned about the impact of real-name registration.

The legacy portal advertising business is under some pressure and the company blamed the disappointing Q1 guidance on a slowdown in Ecommerce and automotive sector advertising.

I would expect the stock to drop Tuesday and am curious to see how the sell side Sina bulls spin what can not possibly be called a positive release or conference call.

I have not had any position in Sina in almost two years but if it goes below $50 I may be a buyer. Weibo is still an amazing product with significant value, even if the “Facebook+Twitter of China” hype has blown off. The stock will probably get a bump around the Facebook IPO regardless.

Here are some of my tweets, apologies for any typos:

more than 300m registered users for weibo, 27m avg daily users. “did see slowdown is activity and user growth in Q4″ $sina.

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

slowdown in user activity attributable to increased anti spam effort. to a lesser degree user fatigue played a role $sina

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

“success rate for real name id verification is 55%, which means over 40% of new registered users did not pass verification process.”

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

“still trying to figure out details” of real name implementation, “can not rule out new tightening procedures” $sina

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

lot of legal disclaimers @ weibo real name uncertainty. covering their a$$,wont publicly say confident process will be ez 2 get around $sina

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

says monetization will come from advertising. weibo display ad system in q1, self service ad system in q2 $SINA

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

do not expect significant weibo monetization in 2012. says any monetization will really hit in 2nd half $sina

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

ecommerce advertising cutting back significantly as investment “bubble” ends. car sector, 30% of total $sina ad revenue, off to slow start

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$SINA expects losses in Q1. for whole year “results may continue to suffer” mostly due to weibo, “another year of investment 4 sina”

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$SINA CEO–>200k weibo apps, only 20k apps active. Mobile usage growing much faster than PC usage. //mobile much harder 2 monetize

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$SINA probably a great buy if tanks below 50, buy into Facebook IPO, ride the hype back up?

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$SINA Ming Zhao asks on 2012 total weibo spend. CEO: 110-120m spend in 2011. q4 11 $35m. at least 140m for 2012/sounds like could be higher

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$SINA CEO: not planning to increase weibo personnel. interesting, no growth in censor load as real name kicks in?

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$SINA CEO actually says expect $160m total 2012 weibo costs

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$SINA CEO predicts 10-20% of new users may drop out real name registration process. then 40-45% of those who try will fail verification

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$SINA those who fail have read only weibo access. so how valuable are those users? that ain’t facebook+twitter

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$SINA 3.16 deadline 4 conversion of existing users is a “preliminary deadline”, says most likely will take longer//expect April hammer drop?

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$SINA CEO “hopeful it [real name] will not have 2 much impact” on usage/registrations. surprisingly uncertain.or knows & doesnt want 2 say?

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$SINA CEO: said weibo added 10-15m registered users in January. but going forward going to focus on active user % 2 registered users

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$SINA CEO: initial response rate 2 trying get existing users 2 upgrade 2 real name has been “quite low”. lots of “uncertainty” & “hopefully”

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$SINA Citi analyst asks good ? @ mobile monetization potential. CEO says not meaningful in 2012. but “hopefully” more meaningful in future

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$SINA has 130,000 weibo enterprise accounts. free for now. looking at fee-based value add services, such as data/tools 4 social media mktg

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$sina seems to be saying that the basic weibo enterprise account will remain free

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$sina weibo definitely has real value but hard 2 determine rite entry price as core sina biz seems 2b declining.<3b mkt cap probably b cheap

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

$SINA CEO sounded very diffident. bet government is pushing much harder on them than they expected & they r quite worried about real name

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

 

interesting $sina will now focus disclosure on active user %. that #likely go up as real name kills off spam/inactive accounts. spinnable

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) February 28, 2012

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