No. The libel occurred in early (end of February, I believe) 2013. As stock price is directly proportional (mostly) to earnings, note a stock price chart covering the date range 2/13 to 3/14:
it can be seen that everyone realized the article was libelous, especially as it couldn't be confirmed by Qihoo's rivals (which they certainly would have done).
But what is more concerning occurred today:
(Source:
http://blogs.barrons.com/asiastocks...s-online-lottery-sales-affects-netease-qihoo/
China suspended online lottery sales starting March 1. Sina’s tech site reported that 38 Chinese Internet platforms, including
Alibaba Group (
BABA),
Tencent Holdings (0700.HK/
TCEHY) and
Netease (
NTES), have suspended online lottery sales in the past weekend.
Online lottery market was growing fast. According to
Analysys, a market research firm, the total gross merchandize volume of online lottery in the third-quarter last year jumped 43% year-on-year to 30.4 billion yuan. Total online lottery market is expected to reach 88.5 billion in 2014, or 22% of total lottery sales in China.
How would the suspension affect the Internet companies?
Online lottery contributes a very
insignificant portion of Alibaba, Tencent and
Baidu‘s (
BIDU) revenue; in other words, the Big Three should not be affected. On the other hand, Netease and
Qihoo 360 (
QIHU) received 8.7% and 8.3% of their revenue from online lottery sales in the third-quarter.
Credit Suisse analyst
Dick Wei and team reckon that the suspension -
if it continues throughout 2015 – will affect 1.3%, 1% and 0.4% of Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu’s revenue respectively.
Qihoo and Netease will see 4.9% and 5.9% of their revenues vanished.
But impact on the actual bottom-line
may well be smaller, because the marketing expenses for this fast-growing category are quite high and therefore net margins of the online lottery businesses are low, noted
Morgan Stanley‘s
Robert Lin and team. Chinese Internet companies like to burn cash to land grab hot new fields.