In the earnings statement sent today to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, where it is listed, the company indicated that its revenue grew by 7% compared to the same period last year, reaching 320.618 billion yuan (€40.708 billion).
In the second quarter of the year, the company’s net profit increased by 82% year-on-year, while revenues rose by 8%.
The company stated that the results obtained between April and June “demonstrate the strengths” of what it calls its “platform plus content” strategy, highlighting the return to growth of the gaming segment in China and the acceleration of growth in international titles.
What Tencent refers to as “value-added services” (video games and social networks), its main source of revenue at 49% of the total, increased its revenue by 6% year-on-year in the second quarter.
This development surpasses the recovery of the second-largest segment, ‘fintech’ (financial technology) and corporate services (+4%), but the fastest-growing division is online advertising, which increased by 19%, driven by ads on video services, and now accounts for the same percentage of the group’s total revenues.
The slowdown in the fintech business is attributed by the company to the lower revenue from commercial payments, due to moderated consumption in China, and the decrease in revenues from loans, as a result of stricter regulatory measures for the sector.
The popular social network WeChat – the Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp – closed June with about 1.371 billion monthly active users, an increase of 3% compared to the same period in 2023.
In the statement, the largest company by market capitalization on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange claims to have repurchased a total of 52.3 billion Hong Kong dollars (€6.098 billion) in shares in the first half of the year. The company’s shares have risen by just over 26% so far this year.
Looking to the future, Tencent plans to concentrate investments on its platforms and technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), to “create new business value and better respond to user needs.”
In a brief message included in the earnings statement, Tencent’s founder and chairman, Pony Ma, celebrated the “continued success” of the tech company and committed to continue “creating value for shareholders and society, actively promoting innovation, responding to community needs, and contributing to a sustainable future for all.”