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China’s Tencent to ramp up cloud and payments businesses after reporting 43pc profit growth

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Tencent chief executive Pony Ma Huateng said the company’s mobile games and advertising businesses had ‘above industry year-on-year revenue growth rates’. Photo: Dickson Lee
Bien PerezandZen Soo

Chinese internet powerhouse Tencent Holdings is looking to ramp up its cloud and payments businesses after reporting a lower-than-expected quarterly profit for the three months to September 30 as spending on content and marketing increased ahead of its 18th year anniversary.

In a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Wednesday, Tencent said its third-quarter net profit grew 43 per cent to 10.65 billion yuan (HK$12.05 billion), up from 7.44 billion yuan in the same period last year, on the back of strong revenue from its smartphone games and social performance advertising businesses.

That fell short of the estimated 11.68 billion yuan from a consensus forecast of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, as the company boosted spending on content and marketing during the period.

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Total revenue climbed 52 per cent to 40.39 billion yuan from 26.59 billion yuan a year earlier, ahead of the consensus estimate of 39.02 billion yuan.

Tencent chairman and chief executive Pony Ma Huateng said in a statement that the company’s mobile games and advertising businesses had “above industry year-on-year revenue growth rates and continued to generate healthy margins”.

We have sought to enrich the lives of users through technology
Pony Ma Huateng, Tencent chairman

“For key infrastructure platforms supporting our ecosystem, specifically payment and cloud services, we saw significant progress in adoption and usage. We will continue to invest in these strategic areas,” Ma said in a conference call with analysts and journalists.

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