Tencent posts strong earnings growth

Tencent posted 56 percent annual revenue growth while profit surged 44 percent thanks to strong games and payment related services in the past year.

The social and online gaming giant said 2017 profit under non-GAAP rules jumped 44 percent to 66.4 billion yuan (US$10.2 billion) and full-year revenue stood at 237.8 billion yuan. 

Mobile gaming income in the fourth quarter hiked 59 percent to 16.99 billion yuan with PC game revenue up 11.2 percent over the same period to 12.8 billion yuan.

The monthly active user of its popular smartphone social networking application WeChat climbed 11 percent from a year ago to 988.6 billion.

Offline transaction volumes through WeChat Pay more than doubled from a year ago and social transaction volumes, or small sum payment between WeChat contacts, also picked up. The company is quickly catching up with rival Alibaba Group’s payment service Alipay.

Games, payment related services, digital content subscriptions and sales, and social and video advertising were key contributors to the overall revenue growth.

“We are increasing our investment in areas including video, payment, cloud, AI technologies and smart retail,” chairman and CEO Pony Ma said.