Technology Company Tencent Reports 69% Profit Increase

Asia’s largest technology company Tencent has reported a 69% profit increase. The company exceeded analysts’ expectation for Q3 107, reporting an overall profit of 18 billion yuan ($2.7 billion) on total revenue of $65.2 yuan ($9.8 billion).  A forecast by S&P Global Marketing had predicted profits of 15.7 billion yuan and revenues of 61 billion yuan. The profits are thought to be down to the firm’s performance in the mobile and PC gaming industry.

Tencent’s older PC unit reached sales of 14.6 billion yuan ($2.2 billion), growing a total of 27%. The mobile gaming unit managed to see growth of a massive 84%, with total sales of 18.2 billion yuan ($2.75 billion). The firm owns one of the worlds’s best selling mobile apps of the year “Honour of Kings” as well as “League of Legends” on PC. Sales from both of games are thought to of contributed to Tencent’s sales this year, along with others. However, they have not detailed the total sales from each title.

Tencent is best known for its mobile messaging app “WeChat”, which when combined with its sister service “QQ”, managed to reach 980 million users each month. These services had a 25% growth rate, with over 38 billion messages being shared each day on the apps. Although WeChat is one of the world’s most commonly used messaging services, Tencent has not reported a huge amount of revenue from the service. Profits come from timeline advertising and general ads, which grew to 11 billion yuan ($1.6 billion). That’s a 48% increase in profits from last year.

WeChat is a way for Tencent to promote its other services and to make money in other ways. For example, it offers a payment service which saw growth of 280% this year. The service can be used to purchase goods online and send money to friends and family, and provides an alternative to other online payment sites like Alipay, Apple Pay and PayPal. Tencent also provide on online service, which it claims has beaten Alibaba’s Youku to become China’s most used video service on mobile devices.

The company’s CEO Pony Ma said in a statement that. “We believe this success reflects our increasing investment in self-commissioned video content, our improved selection of licensed video content, and our scheduling and audience management initiatives,” Tencent is working on expanding its services, as well as making new investments. The firm bough 12% shares in Snap this month, as well as search engine “Sogou” and an e-book company.