Sohu: New Media Fox or Just Another Game Player? 搜狐：新媒体巨头还是一个网游公司？

By newsdoug on April 26, 2011

Sohu.com (Nasdaq: SOHU) has kicked off the China Internet earnings season with stellar results, at least in terms of headline numbers, with profit and revenue both up by healthy figures in the 30-40 percent range and more strong growth seen for the current quarter. (official announcement; English article; Chinese article) But those same results also include information that some might consider disturbing in terms of where the company is going. Sohu might want investors to believe it’s a diversified media company, with revenue coming in from search, advertising and online games. But the reality is that Changyou (Nasdaq: CYOU), Sohu’s separately listed online game unit, actually earned a first-quarter profit of$52.8 million, bigger than the profit of $44.8 million for Sohu itself, which consolidates Changyou into its own results. While there’s nothing wrong with being an online game company, investors should realize that Sohu isn’t exactly the diversified media company it would like people to believe and realize the risks associated with game companies whose fortunes can quickly change depending on the success or failure of individual titles.

Bottom line: Sohu looks increasingly like peers such as NetEase (Nasdaq: NTES) and Shanda (Nasdaq: SNDA), which are online game companies pretending to be diversified new media firms.

搜狐<SOHU.O>财报引人注目，当前季度利润和营收都有30%-40%的健康增长。但在公司发展方向方面，其中也有一些让人感到不安的因素。搜狐可能希望投资者把自己看成一个多元化的媒体公司，收入分别来自於搜索引擎、广告和互联网游戏等。但事实是，搜狐旗下独立上市的网络游戏部门–畅游<CYOU.O>第一季度利润为5,280万美元，比搜狐自身的4,480万美元利润还多。虽然作为一个网络游戏公司本身没有错，但投资者应该认识到，搜狐并非是其自身认为的那种多元化媒体公司，要意识到搜狐会面临游戏公司所要面临的风险，即资产可能因具体一款或几款游戏的成败而迅速发生变化。

一句话：搜狐越来越像其竞争对手网易<NTES.O> 和盛大<SNDA.O>，实质上是网游公司，但都在假装自己是多元化的新媒体公司。