Cici Cao

Tencent (0700) announced a better-than-expected net profit of 53.23 billion yuan (HK$57.37 billion) for the third quarter of 2024, up 47.12 percent year-on-year, thanks to its robust revenue growth in the games business following the recent launches of new titles.

Analysts earlier anticipated a 46.18 billion yuan net profit over the period.

The Chinese tech giant recorded a third-quarter revenue of 167.19 billion yuan, up by 8 percent from a year ago, in line with an estimated 167.8 billion yuan.

It reported a revenue of 487.8 billion yuan for the first nine months, up 7 percent.

For the third quarter, revenues from value-added services increased by 9 percent year-on-year to 82.7 billion yuan.

It delivered robust revenue growth in the games business, underpinned by consistent performance of evergreen games globally and contributions from new games with evergreen potential.

Its domestic games revenues increased by 14 percent year-on-year to 37.3 billion yuan, more than the market's expected 12 percent, driven by performance of such titles as Valorant and Honor of Kings.

Revenue from international games reached 14.5 billion yuan, up 9 percent year-on-year, thanks to notable games including Pubg Mobile and Brawl Stars.

Its revenues from social networks rose by 4 percent to 30.9 billion yuan, supported by growth in app-based game virtual item sales and music subscriptions, partially offset by a decline in music-related and games-related live streaming revenues.

Meanwhile, revenues from marketing services amounted to 30 billion within the period, up 17 percent year-on-year, driven by robust advertiser demand for video accounts, as well as contributions from Paris Olympics-related brand advertising.

Revenues from fintech and business services rose by 2 percent year-on-year to 53.1 billion yuan.

In other news, Alibaba Health (0241) announced a net profit of 769 million yuan, up 72.45 percent year-on-year, in the six months that ended September, thanks to growth in its businesses.

It generated a total revenue of 14.27 billion yuan for the period, a year-on-year increase of 10.2 percent.

The group, with more than 300 million annual active users, continues to be the online business-to-customer medical and healthcare products retail platform with the highest number of annual active users and the largest total annual merchandise transaction volume in China.

Tencent posts 53b yuan profit in third quarter