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Tencent posts strongest quarterly results

The Chinese technology giant's popular social app WeChat now has nearly 1 billion active users.
Written by Cyrus Lee, Contributor

Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings posted record-high results for the three months ended March, with revenue climbing to 49.6 billion yuan ($7.2 billion) and net income reaching 14.5 billion yuan, both beating analysts' projections, the Shenzhen-based company said on Wednesday.

Shares of the Hong Kong-listed Tencent also hit a new high on Thursday after the strong Q1 result, increasing 1.6 percent to close at HK$264 a share on Thursday. The stock has gained 39 percent so far this year. Tencent is also the largest Asian company in terms of market capitalization.

Tencent's strong quarterly revenue was driven by soaring growth from mobile games and advertising income. Revenue from mobile games surged 57 percent to 12.9 billion yuan and internet advertising income expanded 47 percent to 6.9 billion yuan.

Its successful mobile game Honour of Kings owns more than 50 million daily active users from its WeChat and QQ platforms to purchase game items. Analysts believe this game alone may have generated as much as 3 billion yuan for the company.

The company's executive also said at an analyst conference that Tencent will continue to unveil new mobile games through investments and acquisitions. It will also launch self-developed games and try to attract more users from overseas markets.

The number of WeChat users also reached 937 million at the end of March, rising from the 899 million users recorded at the end of 2016.

The number of WeChat users also surpassed another popular messaging app owned by Tencent, QQ, which currently owns 860 million users, down 2 percent from a quarter earlier.

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