Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Google and Analysts Romance will continue until the Last Drop

I have already get used to it: that they never ask any Really important questions, about click fraud, source of revenue, operational cash flow or Real Earnings which are below street expectations without Tax deals done in December just before end of the Q4, but this spin on Disaster is really amazing:

"BEIJING (AP) -- China's second-biggest Web portal Sohu.com Inc. said Tuesday its fourth-quarter earnings fell 32 percent, weighed down by higher costs, causing shares to drop in U.S. after-hours trading.
Quarterly earnings dropped to $6.1 million, or 16 cents per share, from $8.9 million, or 23 cents per share a year earlier. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial forecast a profit of 17 cents per share.
Revenue rose 16 percent to $34.4 million from the same period of 2005, but missed Wall Street's expectation for $35.5 million.
Sohu, which trails Sina.com among Chinese Internet content providers as measured by revenue, said the bulk of its sales came from online advertising. Ad revenue grew 23 percent year-over-year.
But results were hurt in part by a sharp rise in advertising costs. Brand advertising costs rose 66 percent to $7.1 million, while search-ad costs increased by 56 percent to $1.7 million over"
Looks for me like rather honest and straight forward reporting of Disastrous Q4 results, but I can not get it right without help from friendly Analyst:
"Analyst Safa Rashtchy of Piper Jaffray & Co. said Sohu's results were sound despite the lower earnings. He said a fall had been expected due to regulatory changes for wireless services that have hit revenues for all Chinese providers.
Sohu is still one of the best-positioned companies to profit from China's booming online ad market, he said.
"I thought it was a good performance," Rashtchy said. "Their advertising business is still very healthy."
The same guys are covering Google - they will see "results were sound despite the lower earnings" right until the last drop in share price.

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