During a conference call with investors 2 months ago, Sohu's CFO Derek Palaschuk calmly proclaimed, more than once, that getting SMS-related (Short Message Services) money from China Mobile was never a problem. However a report in China's 21st Century Business Herald shows cracks in this assertion.

The newspaper said the China Mobile debt includes 50 or 60 million CNY owed to NetEase.com (NASDAQ NTES), more than 40 million CNY to Sohu.com (NASDAQ SOHU) and about 50 million CNY to Sina.com (NASDAQ SINA).

The article says that China Mobile has purposely postponed payments as it seeks information about which of its service providers have relationships with illegal pornographic services. As the three portals rely heavily on SMS to both increase their revenues and boost their stock prices, postponement of payments could lead to large drops in revenue for the third, and possibly fourth quarters of this year.