Qihoo 360 Technology (QIHU) Tops Q4 EPS by 3c; Guides Q1 Revs Slightly Above the Street

Qihoo 360 Technology (NYSE: QIHU) reported Q4 EPS of $0.75, $0.03 better than the analyst estimate of $0.72. Revenue for the quarter came in at $431.2 million versus the consensus estimate of $417.44 million.

Qihoo 360 Technology sees Q1 2015 revenue of $375-380 million, versus the consensus of $374.03 million.

"We are pleased to report our sixteenth consecutive quarter of robust growth as a public company and deliver another full year of solid progress in operations," said Mr. Hongyi Zhou, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Qihoo 360. "As we continued to maintain our leadership position in key product categories, such as PC security, PC browser, mobile security and mobile app store, we made significant progress with new product initiatives, particularly those related to mobile Internet. We exceeded our year-end PC search traffic share target and further established our search service as a strong alternative to the market leader. Our mobile search continued to gain traction with innovative product features and new branding initiatives. We are well-positioned to capture additional market share in China's massive PC and mobile search market. In December 2014 we formed a strategic partnership with Coolpad to enter the strategically important smartphone market. We firmly believe that the combination of software and hardware ecosystems will play a critical role in the future of Chinese mobile Internet. Although still in its nascent stage, our endeavor in selective IOT (Internet of Things) categories also achieved a solid start. 360 Kids Guard, 360 Family Guard, and 360 Secure Router were all well received by the market."

"While we made significant progress financially and operationally, there are still areas need to improve. We are determined to address these issues directly and proactively. Over the past few months we have realigned our product development efforts, streamlined our monetization operations, and adjusted our organizational structure. We believe these efforts will significantly improve our operational efficiency, accelerate product development cycles, and optimize monetization potential. We are very confident that we will achieve our full year operational goals in 2015," concluded Mr. Zhou.

Mr. Xiangdong Qi, President of Qihoo 360, added "We are happy to surpass our internal revenue and profitability targets for both the fourth quarter and the full year. We continue to see robust growth in key areas of our business. Online advertising grew 81% in 2014, supported by continued strong ramp-up in search monetization. Internet value-added services once again outpaced the market with revenue growth of 142% in 2014, with strong ramp-up in mobile games being the main driver. Both search and mobile app store businesses more than tripled and have ramped up faster than expected. They will continue to be key drivers of our growth for the foreseeable future.

"While we have achieved robust revenue growth every year since our public listing, we realize there are still many unturned stones and underutilized capacities in our ecosystem. We are streamlining our monetization system into a fully integrated structure that seamlessly covers PC and mobile, and web and apps. We believe these efforts should drive accelerated revenue growth down the road. Meanwhile, we will continue to make proactive investments in product and technology development in order to strengthen our leadership position and expand our footprint, particularly in mobile Internet and search technology where we see tremendous opportunities for future expansion. We believe these investments will further strengthen our foundation, support sustainable growth and drive long-term shareholder value."

For earnings history and earnings-related data on Qihoo 360 Technology (QIHU) click here.

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