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Revenue said “nice try,” earnings said “not enough”
Weibo’s first-quarter 2026 print had a little bit of everything: revenue came in at $421.3 million, which beat Wall Street’s estimate, but adjusted EPS landed at 34 cents and missed expectations. Translation: the top line showed up with a decent outfit; the bottom line forgot its shoes.
The user problem is the real headline
The bigger issue for investors was the audience math. Monthly active users fell to 562 million in March from 591 million a year earlier, while average daily active users also slipped. That’s the kind of number that makes ad businesses sweat, because fewer eyeballs today can mean less pricing power tomorrow.
- Advertising and marketing revenue rose 9% to $369.8 million, helped by foreign-exchange tailwinds and stronger demand from internet services, autos, and local services.
- But value-added services revenue dropped 11% to $51.6 million, mostly because game-related revenue cooled off.
- Adjusted operating margin narrowed to 28% from 33% a year ago, so even with sales growth, profitability got a little squishier.
AI, video, and the “please stay longer” strategy
CEO Gaofei Wang kept pushing the future-facing pitch: better feed recommendations, more original video, AI content tools, AI-generated video features, and upgraded search. That’s Weibo basically saying, “Don’t leave yet — we’ve got algorithms for that.”
The company also said video time spent grew at a double-digit rate, which is encouraging. But investors tend to be a little less enchanted by product roadmap poetry when monthly active users are shrinking and the stock is down 4.27%.
Big picture: Weibo still knows how to grow revenue, but it’s fighting the classic platform problem: if the crowd thins out, the ad engine gets harder to keep humming.