But in terms of margins, you should expect an improvement in the margins and I think going forward into next year you should expect that our operating margins should be improving and our cost will grow slower than our overall revenue growth.
Operator
All right. And your next question comes from Catherine Leung from the Citigroup. Please proceed.
Catherine Leung - Citigroup
Hi. Good morning. And congratulations also on the strong quarter. My two questions, firstly, following on the successful CRIC IPO. Could you please discuss your vertical portal strategy and which key criteria would you be looking for if you were to work with another partner?
And secondly, Charles, can you please update us on your management-led investment in terms of the timing? And also considering the six-month lock up, is there any thinking as to whether you might extend that lock up? Thank you.
Charles Chao
Okay, Catherine. This is Charles. Regarding our strategy in the vertical areas, I said before that CRIC transaction is probably one of our experiments in this area. I mean, Historically, I mean, SINA is known for the largest portal in China but many actually people tend to overlook the fact that we also have a lot of verticals, they''re the leading verticals in the market, I mean, including of course real estate and then finance, automobiles, sports, news and entertainment, a lot of areas.
And so, I think, I suppose that we have been, I mean, monetizing our traffic through advertising only. And one of the most important fact about our CRIC transaction, the rationale effect by teaming up with complementary business and working with the leaders in a particular vertical industry and we can actually realize a lot of synergies and create multiple revenue streams. And in the meanwhile, we can still leverage our big platform, I mean, for SINA as a media platform, as a platform for brand and for user base.
And so that actually is the rationale we are going to continue to explore in the future to looking for new business opportunities and try to increase our value, I mean, for our offerings, I mean, in the future. And but I think it''s not like we have to well -- it''s not we will spin-off a lot of verticals. But in the future if we do have opportunities, I mean, in certain vertical areas by working with industry leaders in that particular vertical area and if they can provide complementary service, talent, expertise and if we can generate a lot of synergies and we will continue to explore those opportunities in the vertical area.
But in the areas of verticals in the future, we are going to for some key areas where we are very strong, we have a lot of revenues, we will seek control over these vertical development, meaning we are going to consolidate future, any future transactions and particular transaction mergers, I mean, by having a control interest. I mean, CRIC probably is exceptional because our partners are very strong in this sector and provides a much higher revenue and profit.
And so we weigh the pros and cons and decided to get equity interest in CRIC and we believe that actually is in the best interest of our shareholder value and also that’s the best way to actually explore business opportunities going forward. But in other sectors, it''s more likely than not especially in the major verticals we''re going to seek control of any future transactions and so we can consolidate the revenue and business of that particular vertical.
And for the second question regarding the management purchase of the shares, I think we are at very late stage, I mean, for this process and we expect to close that transaction very shortly and so it''s going to happen very, very quickly. And the, so lock out is for six months and so within six months, the management, I mean, the investment shareholders cannot sell any shares based on our agreement. I hope that answers your question.
Operator
All right. And your next question comes from Tian Hou. Please proceed.
Tian X. Hou - Pali Capital
Actually, I have a question regarding the margin trends I know you just mentioned that the margin will improve. So as you carve our the real estate business, I understand real estate business is a higher margin business. So carve out the higher margin business back towards the lower margin business. So next year you say the margin will continue to improve. I just want to understand where the improvement comes from?
Herman Yu
Yeah. Tian, as I mentioned in the call script, I actually laid out what our operating income would have been have we carved out our SINA real estate. So when I''m saying that the margin would improve going forward, when I''m saying that the cost would increase slower than revenue, I''m actually using apples-to-apples basis, meaning excluding the SINA real estate business.
Charles Chao
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