Error.

When it comes to expected growth in earnings per share, Shanghai-based Sina also lags well behind. While Tencent is expected to deliver 53% year-on-year growth this year and Baidu 26%, but Sina’s earnings could actually drop 33%, according to analysts surveyed by FactSet.

Perhaps the company’s performance so far this year is a preview of what’s to come. In the second quarter, Sina’s net profit shrunk 15% on lackluster performance of the company’s web portal and mobile value-added services businesses. Advertising revenue, which accounts for around three quarters of Sina’s top line, grew 29% year-on-year, merely in-line with management’s guidance. That number was mainly driven by a doubling of advertising sales for Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging service, but was bogged down by weak revenues from its web portals. The company missed out on lucrative advertising dollars after Chinese authorities revoked its online video license in April, preventing Sina from airing much of this year’s Fifa World Cup on its portals. It’s not known if or when the company would get the license back.

Topping off a bumpy six months was the resignation last month of Chen Tong, a charismatic 17-year veteran who was chief editor of Sina’s news website, although analysts said this is unlikely to substantially affect the company’s performance. Chen has since joined rival Xiaomi .

Sina is due to announce third-quarter earnings results next Tuesday and analysts aren’t exactly hopeful. “It is very likely that Sina will miss the consensus target for third-quarter earnings because it’s suffering from declining growth in advertising revenues,” said Ricky Lai, an analyst at Chinese brokerage Guotai Junan Securities. If that happens, analysts would be quick to slash target prices, which currently average $66, or even downgrade the stock’s ratings, as seen in the aftermath of the company’s second-quarter earnings announcement.

When it comes to long-term growth prospects, the company also appears to fall behind the curve. Analysts see Tencent’s earnings expanding around 34% on average during each of the next three to five years, and Baidu’s 36%. For Sina, the expectation is a much slimmer 16%.

A reason for this could lie with Sina’s reluctance to build out its operations. “Compared to the relative growth in China’s internet and mobile sectors, Sina’s investment in its new business seemed to lag behind its peers,” wrote Tian X. Hou, a Beijing-based analyst at T.H. Capital. While Tencent and Baidu have been expanding their empires in recent years with numerous acquisitions and joint ventures, Sina has been less active and remains comparatively narrow in its operations. The company has started to invest in online financial services, payment systems and lotteries, but it is a latecomer to these areas, as well as to the diversification game.

Sina pretty much relies on two core assets – its web portals and Weibo (WB). This may prove to be an Achilles heel for the company. With analysts forecasting chilly future growth for Sina’s portal business and a challenging restructuring, the burden of future prospects is largely borne by Weibo. “We believe Sina’s value resides mostly in Weibo,”wrote Morgan Stanley’s Phillip Wan. “Weibo monetization is still at an early stage and we forecast Weibo’s net profit to show a compound annual growth rate of 75% from 2015 to 2017, with net margin expanding from -1% in 2014 to 28% in 2017.”

However, Weibo may fail to live up to its potential for turning in advertising dollars if its user numbers were to weaken. “Users have been shifting from Weibo to Tencent’s WeChat,” said Guotai Junan’s Ricky Lai. “Overall, it appears Weibo’s user base is actually shrinking.”

According to China Internet Network Information Center, the number of Weibo users fell 9% last year to 280 million, although Sina disputes this. In addition, data from WeiboReach, an independent Weibo monitoring website, shows a decline in user activity for the microblog last year. A major cause could be the Chinese government’s crackdown on Weibo, which led to a shutdown of many big verified accounts, according to T.H. Capital’s Tian X. Hou.

Since it was spun off and listed in April, Weibo shares have experienced volatile trading, fluctuating as much as 25% over a matter of days. After reaching a high above $24 mid-September, the stock has since retreated to around $19, well below the price at which it debuted. Sina currently has a 57% stake in Weibo.

Of course, the company’s stock price could receive support from a $500 million share repurchase program announced in April. The value of the buyback is around a fifth of Sina’s market capitalization. As of mid-August, the company had repurchased just about $58 million of shares.

Another pillar of support lies with the sizeable amount of cash on Sina’s balance sheet, pegged at about $1 billion at the end of the second quarter. That’s net cash roughly equal to around 30% of its market cap. In addition, debt makes up only 8% of Sina’s assets.

Weibo also could get a boost from another major shareholder: Alibaba, which holds around 18% of Weibo’s outstanding shares. “Some of the investors are quite positive on Alibaba’s investment because they think Alibaba might help out Weibo,” said Guotai Junan’s Ricky Lai. But that remains wishful thinking — for now.

On a broader level, a slowdown in China’s economic growth could also add to Sina’s challenges. “China’s general economy did not see meaningful improvement, which put a damper on the overall advertising landscape,” wrote Hou. Automobile, fast-moving consumer goods and internet services companies are the top three sources of advertising revenue for Sina.

Sina’s name means ‘new wave’ in Mandarin. But it looks like the company has fallen behind in catching the latest trends shaping the internet landscape. It might make a cheap value bet in the future, but now’s not yet the time to catch this wave.