Tencent overtakes Alibaba as most valuable Chinese tech company
China's Tencent, one of the biggest tech firms in the region and the owner of messaging app WeChat certainly has something to er, type home about.
A stellar set of earnings has sent shares surging as much as 6.2 per cent to an all-time high and topping Alibaba as the most valuable tech company in China in terms of market capitalisation.
The Hong Kong listed firm's market cap stood at 1.92 trillion Hong Kong dollars, or $247.6bn in afternoon trading, while New York listed Alibaba stood at $238.7bn after the US market close.
The figures
Profits jumped 47 per cent in the second quarter of the year to 10.7bn yuan (£1.23bn) while revenue popped 52 per cent to 35.7bn yuan, smashing expectations and growing at its fastest pace in nearly four years.
Smartphone gaming was the standout success more than doubling in the quarter to the end of June – up 114 per cent to 9.6bn yuan.
That figure is greater even than its ad revenue of 6.53bn yuan, which was also up 60 per cent.
Why it's interesting
Tencent does just about everything – messaging (WeChat has 806m users), music streaming, social networking and more. But it's clearly gaming which is attracting eyeballs – and their cash.
No wonder then that Tencent was part of a group to buy up Finnish game maker of Clash of Clans fame, Supercell, earlier this year for billions.
The march of China's tech giants continues after Alibaba reported a huge jump in revenue earlier this month.
And, Tencent has yet to fully tap its potential ad revenues, which as Facebook shows, is a rather lucrative avenue.
What Tencent said
"During the second quarter, we sustained solid growth in our platforms and businesses, including our social and media platforms, games, digital content, advertising, and payment services," said chairman and chief executive Ma Huateng.
We executed strategic initiatives to strengthen our ecosystem and to reinforce our ability to bring best-in-class entertainment content to our users. For example, we integrated QQ Music with China Music Corporation to create the leading online music platform in China, which should help consumers to discover new music, artists to reach more fans, and record labels to drive fresh business models"