Sina Weibo has made its first profit of 3 million USD in the last quarter of 2013, a good starting point as the company prepares for its Initial Public Offering in New York in the second quarter of this year.

Sina's President and Chief Executive Officer, Cao Guowei, confirmed the profit earning in a meeting that tackled the company's latest financial statement that was released today.

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Based on statistics from the financial report, the operating profit of Sina Weibo in the fourth quarter of 2013 reached 71.4 million USD. Year-to year growth was at 163 percent, with advertising revenue reaching 56 million USD. Non-advertising revenue, on the other hand, amounted to 15.4 million USD, for a year-to-year growth of 114 percent.

Sina's net profit for 2013 was at 661.51 million USD with a 26 percent year-to-year growth. Attributable net profit was 45.1 million USD.

Although users of the microblogging platform sensed a decline in Weibo activity due to government's crack down in mid-2013, the financial report found daily user activity to have actually increased by 4.2 percent in the last quarter, with much of the activity tracked on Weibo's cellphone application.

According to a report by "Financial Times" on Monday, Sina has hired Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse AG to handle its IPO listing in New York, where it hopes to raise 500 million USD. 

Twitter, Weibo's microblogging counterpart in the US, openly collected capital of 1 billion USD last year, and is currently valued at over 30 billion USD.