Social media firm’s profit rises on cloud services
HONG KONG — Tencent Holdings Ltd, China’s biggest social media and online entertainment company, posted a 47% rise in quarterly profit on Wednesday, helped by strong growth in new revenue streams such as payment and cloud services.
Net profit for the three months through December was 10.53 billion yuan ($ 1.53 billion). That compared with the 11.75 billion yuan average of six estimates from analysts in a Thomson Reuters poll.
Full-year profit rose 43% to 41.1 billion yuan, while revenue rose 48% to 151.94 billion yuan.
Tencent declared a final dividend of HK$ 0.61 per share, from HK$ 0.47 a year earlier.
Flagship social media smartphone app WeChat had 889.3 million monthly active users at the end of 2016, up 27.6%, Tencent said.
The company planned to add more services within its social platforms this year, expand the popularity of smart phone games and add new games for personal computers ( PCs), Chairman Ma Huateng said in a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Tencent said cloud services revenue more than tripled year on year in 2016 as both the number of enterprise accounts and use of existing accounts increased substantially.
Revenue from value- added services such as smartphone and PC games, Tencent’s biggest line of business, rose 34% to 107.8 billion yuan.
Online advertising, the second- largest line of business, saw revenue rise 54% to 26.97 billion yuan.
Tencent’s shares have risen nearly 19% in Hong Kong this year to a record high of HK$ 225.2 on Wednesday. —