Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

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Shanda Interactive Beats on Earnings
Tuesday August 15, 5:04 pm ET
Shanda Interactive 2nd-Quarter Profit Drops 40 Percent, but Still Beats Street View

NEW YORK (AP) -- Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd., a Chinese online video game company, said Tuesday its second-quarter profit fell 40 percent but still beat Wall Street estimates.

U.S.-traded shares of Shanda shot up 88 cents, or 5.3 percent, to $17.43 in after-hours trading on the INET electronic exchange, after closing up 62 cents at $16.55 on the Nasdaq.

Quarterly earnings dropped to $16.7 million, or 24 cents per American depositary share, but easily topped Wall Street's consensus estimate of 6 cents per share, according to a poll by Thomson Financial.

The Shanghai-based company's revenue decreased 25 percent to $50.7 million (405.7 million yuan), from 539.5 million yuan in the comparable 2005 period, but beat analyst expectations for $43.1 million in revenue.

Revenue from Shanda's massively-multiplayer online role-playing game and casual game divisions declined in the quarter. Sales from the MMOPRG division, which makes up 75 percent of the company's sales, declined 16 percent to $38.1 million over last year. Active paying accounts for the multiplayer online games, which include Mir II and Woool, dropped to 2.2 million from 2.5 million in the first quarter.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060815/earns_shanda_interactive.html?.v=1