WBNASDAQThe short version
Weibo Corporation
Weibo runs China's main public-conversation platform, selling advertising against 567 million monthly users. Revenue has been flat since 2019, and most of its balance sheet is cash, loans and investments rather than the advertising business.
Across the daily record available here — 31 March to 7 August 2026 — the shares ran from $8.75 up to $9.27 in mid-April, down to $7.20 in late June, and closed at $7.94.
Mkt cap $2.1BNet cash $435.4MEV $1.7BP/E FY27E 5.4×
$7.94
Share price, 7 Aug 2026
$1,757m
FY2025 revenue
567m
Monthly users, Dec 2025
$477m
FY2025 free cash flow
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Snapshot
Weibo Corporation in numbers
Price
$7.94as of 2026-08-07
Mkt cap
$2.1B
Net cash
$435.4M
EV
$1.7B
| Year to Dec (USD) | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026E | 2027E | 2028E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | 1.8B | 1.8B | 1.8B | 1.8B | 1.8B | 1.9B |
| EBITDA | – | – | – | 470.5M | 486.0M | 517.1M |
| EBIT | 472.9M | 494.3M | 464.8M | 420.0M | 437.9M | 455.6M |
| EBIT margin | 26.9% | 28.2% | 26.5% | 23.3% | 23.8% | 24.3% |
| EPS | 1.43 | 1.16 | 1.70 | 1.42 | 1.48 | 1.54 |
| EV/EBITDA | – | – | – | 3.6× | 3.5× | 3.3× |
| EV/EBIT | 3.6× | 3.4× | 3.7× | 4.0× | 3.9× | 3.7× |
| P/E | 5.6× | 6.8× | 4.7× | 5.6× | 5.4× | 5.1× |
| FCF yield | 29.8% | 27.1% | 22.4% | 18.0% | 18.5% | 20.5% |
| Gearing | −21.2% | −0.8% | −11.0% | – | – | – |
Consensus: S&P Capital IQ (CapIQ) · as of 2026-08-10Derived from run data; ratios use the latest price.
IThe business
What it sells
Advertising against 567 million monthly users supplies 85% of revenue.
FY2025 revenue by line
Advertising and marketing$1,501.6M85%
Value-added services$255.6M15%
Total revenue of $1,757.2 million in FY2025.
- Who signs. Advertising agencies contracted $942.3 million of FY2025 advertising and advertisers signing directly $559.3 million; the direct line rose 15% in the year while the agency line fell 7%.
- How it prices. Display and promoted marketing sell on a cost-per-thousand-impressions basis, with agency rebates booked against revenue — $222.2 million accrued at year end, 15% of the advertising line.
- The other 15%. Value-added services, mainly memberships and game-related items, were $255.6 million, and fell 11% year on year in the first quarter of 2026.
Unit economics
Each user is cheap to serve, and there are fewer buyers paying larger tickets.
$3.10
Revenue per monthly user, FY2025
$0.74
Direct platform cost per monthly user
0.4m
Advertisers in 20250.6m in 2024
$3,385
Spend per advertiser, ex-Alibaba+39% on 2024
FY2025; advertiser counts as the company reports them.
- The gap that funds the profit. Revenue per monthly user runs a little over four times the direct platform cost of serving that user, which is what leaves roughly a quarter of revenue as operating profit.
- A third of the buyers left in one year. The count fell from 0.6 million to 0.4 million, which the company attributes to churn among advertisers with relatively lower budgets.
- What the record cannot settle. No filing splits revenue by advertiser size, so the 39% rise in average spend fits both small accounts leaving and budgets concentrating among the large ones.
The market it plays in
Weibo earns the widest margin of its listed peers while its advertising line stands still.
FY2025, as each company reports
| Company | Advertising growth | Operating margin |
|---|---|---|
| +0.2% | 26.5% | |
| Weibo, ex-Alibaba | −3.9% | — |
| Bilibili | +22.8% | 3.7% |
| iQIYI | −9.1% | 0.9% |
| Autohome (media) | −24.3% | 11.9% |
| Hello Group | not disclosed | 13.1% |
Weibo reports in dollars and the peers in renminbi, so growth and margin are the like-for-like columns.
- Named rivals. For advertising budgets the filings name Tencent, ByteDance, Kuaishou, Baidu, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili and iQIYI, plus vertical specialists such as Autohome.
- Flat is not stable. Third-party trackers put China's internet advertising market at 5% to 6% growth through 2025, so a currency-neutral flat line is a shrinking position.
- What holds buyers. Nothing contractual — the filing says customers do not have long-term commitments. The friction is the channel: agencies carry 63% of advertising revenue, the top ten of them 32% of group revenue.
IIThe record
The record
FY2025 revenue came in $9.7 million below FY2019, and the margin has given up seven points.
FY2018 → FY2025as reported · $
Revenue$1.8B+0%
Operating margin26.5%−1.7pp
Net income$449M+49%
EPS$1.70+47%
Free cash flow$477M−18%
Open the full statements →Reported income statement and cash flow, FY2018 to FY2025.
- The plateau. Revenue peaked at $2,257.1 million in FY2021, fell 18.6% the next year, and has moved by less than one percent in either direction for three straight years.
- Profit on the same base. FY2019 earned $597.6 million of operating income on $1,766.9 million of revenue; FY2025 earned $464.8 million on $1,757.2 million — 33.8% against 26.5%.
- Net income is not the read. FY2025's 49% rise came from a $214.5 million swing in non-operating items, mostly investment marks, on lower operating profit.
Margin
Platform cost took the margin, and the reported figure is flattered by a credit-loss reversal.
Reported operating margin by quarter
Quarterly results announcements, 2Q23 to 1Q26. Fourth-quarter 2025 costs rose while revenue grew 4%.
- Where it went. Cost of revenues moved from 18.6% of revenue in FY2019 to 24.0% in FY2025, sales and marketing from 26.3% to 27.9%, product development from 16.1% to 18.5%.
- The reversal. FY2025 operating income includes a $32.1 million non-cash reversal of the allowance for credit losses. Without it the margin is about 24.6%, against 28.0% on the same basis in FY2023.
- The counter. $27.0 million of that reversal was cash collected on receivables previously written off — real money, arriving late. What it is not is repeatable.
Balance sheet
Only a sixth of the balance sheet is the advertising business.
Total assets at 31 December 2025
Cash and short-term investments$2,405.1M34%
Long-term investments$1,663.3M23%
Loans and receivables$1,300.3M18%
Operating assets$1,102M16%
Wealth management products$620.5M9%
Financial assets of about $5,808 million are 82% of $7,091.2 million of total assets.
- Cash conversion is real. FY2025 free cash flow was $477.1 million after $42.4 million of capital expenditure — 27% of revenue, on capital intensity that has run between 2% and 4%.
- Not all of it is cash. $946.0 million is credit extended to related parties: $401.9 million of rolling one-year loans to SINA and $408.3 million to an investee described only as being in real estate.
- The debt sits alone. All $1,863.6 million of borrowings are booked at the Cayman holding company, which owns no operating assets and earns no third-party revenue.
IIIThe story now
Claims on the cash
The 2027 maturities land at a parent holding an eighth of the group's liquid assets.
Parent resources against 2027 principal
The 2027 principal is the $800 million term loan maturing 22 August 2027 plus the $330 million convertible note holders may put on 6 December 2027.
- Where the cash is. Of $2,298.9 million of group cash, $757.9 million sat inside the contractually controlled entities — which carry 2.1% of shareholders' equity and pay $706.4 million a year up to the wholly foreign-owned enterprise as a service fee it prices itself.
- The gap. Strip out the SINA receivable and the parent is roughly $220 million short on its own resources. Grossing $1,130 million out of China through the 5% Hong Kong treaty rate costs about $59.5 million, near $0.24 per share.
- The counter-fact, in the same breath. The parent repaid $800.0 million of senior notes in 2024 and paid roughly $740 million of dividends across 2023 to 2026, with no drawn facility disclosed to fund either.
Key finding: Up to $1,130 million of principal can fall due in 2027 at the Cayman parent, which held $302.9 million of the group's $2,405.1 million of liquid assets and has taken no subsidiary dividend since at least 2023, while $757.9 million of the group's $2,298.9 million of cash sat at 31 December 2025 inside contractually controlled entities that carry $84.0 million — 2.1% — of the group's $3,974.7 million of shareholders' equity and pay $706.4 million a year out to the WFOE as a service fee whose price the WFOE sets.
The flat line
One shareholder's spending covered the decline everywhere else in FY2025.
FY2025 advertising revenue by counterparty
| Counterparty | FY2025 ($M) | Change on FY2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Third parties | 1,289.3 | −$25.8m (−2.0%) |
| Alibaba | 173.8 | +$57.0m (+48.8%) |
| SINA | 14.3 | −$10.7m |
| Other related parties | 24.2 | −$17.6m |
| Total advertising | 1,501.6 | +$2.9m (+0.2%) |
Weibo states that Alibaba's spending tracks Alibaba's own marketing strategy, which fluctuates from time to time.
- The cushions are nearly used up. Related-party advertising other than Alibaba has fallen from $166.3 million in 2021 to $38.5 million — from 8.4% of the advertising line to 2.6%.
- The arm's-length book is decelerating. Third-party revenue fell 14.7%, then 3.5%, 2.2% and 2.0% in successive years, which is converging on something even if not yet on a floor.
- Audience, not price. In 2025 revenue per daily user fell 0.9% while daily users fell 3.1%, from 260 million to 252 million; March 2026 showed 254 million.
The investment book
Half of seven years of operating cash went into a portfolio that has lost money.
Net pre-tax result on the investment book
Equity-method results, realised gains, fair-value changes and impairment, 2019 to 2025.
- The scale. $2,244.2 million of net cash went into long-term investments between 2019 and 2025 — 49% of operating cash flow, and 3.5 times what reached shareholders — for a cumulative pre-tax loss of $681.0 million.
- The marks that remain. The privately held sleeve carries $291.7 million against an $824.3 million cost basis, 35 cents on the dollar after $624.4 million of cumulative write-downs.
- The counter. The direction changed recently: 2023 produced a $32.0 million gain and 2025 a $92.5 million gain, the best of the seven, on impairment of $6.0 million, the smallest on record.
IVThe price
What you pay
At $7.94 the market credits the financial book at about half, and the business at nothing.
Value left for the operating business
| Recovery on net financial assets | Residual ($M) | Multiple of $427m operating cash flow |
|---|---|---|
| 0% | 1,949.7 | 4.6x |
| 25% | 963.7 | 2.3x |
| 50% | −22.4 | — |
| 75% | −1,008.4 | — |
| 100% | −1,994.5 | — |
Financial assets of $5,807.7 million less $1,863.6 million of debt is $3,944.2 million, against $1,949.7 million of equity value on 245,549,858 shares.
- The arithmetic. Writing the whole $3.94 billion of net financial assets to zero, with the debt still repaid in full, leaves the advertising business bought at 4.6 times the cash it generates by itself.
- What that embeds. At a 12% discount rate, 4.6 times corresponds to a perpetual decline of about 10% a year; the ex-Alibaba book fell 3.9% in FY2025.
- The other side. If the onshore cash and the related-party loans are never distributed, their worth to an outside holder approaches zero whatever the carrying value says.
Street and control
The average target sits 14% above the price, and no outside holder can force the gap closed.
Sell-side targets against the quote
Low target
$6.60
Median
$9.00
Mean, 16 analysts
$9.04
High target
$11.10
Sixteen analysts: six buy, two outperform, seven hold, one underperform, one sell.
- Against the peers. Weibo trades at 5.6 times trailing earnings against 9.2 for Hello Group and 16.8 for Autohome, which face the same jurisdiction, and at about half its stated book value of $15.97 a share.
- Who decides. SINA holds 35.7% of the economics and 62.5% of the votes, and every voting share of the vehicle sitting above SINA belongs to Weibo's chairman.
- Insider ownership, on both tests. Directors and officers outside the SINA block hold 1.8% of the shares, and no open-market purchase by any insider appears anywhere in the record.
What to watch
A real cash generator priced below its own financial assets, behind a structure that decides who reaches them.
- 01A subsidiary dividend to Weibo Corporation, which has not occurred since at least 2023, or a term refinancing of the August 2027 loan announced with time to spare.
- 02Two consecutive quarters of positive constant-currency growth in non-Alibaba advertising without an event base, with daily users holding at or above 252 million.
- 03Disclosed execution of the $200 million repurchase authorisation before it expires on 31 December 2026.
- 04A second year of Alibaba spend rising while every other advertiser cohort falls.
This distils a guided study built chapter by chapter from the filings, the calls and the peer record.
Compiled from the full report · 2026-08-11 · For information, not investment advice.