Tencent, the world's largest gaming firm by
revenue, booked profit of CNY 47.77 billion for the three months through March,
higher than the average analyst estimates published by Refinitiv of CNY 35.45
billion.
The results come as Chinese regulators have
stepped up an anti-trust clampdown on internet giants, and have already
penalised Tencent rival Alibaba $2.75 billion. Reuters reported last month that
Tencent was told by Chinese anti-trust regulators to pay a fine that could
exceed CNY 10 billion, give up exclusive music rights, and sell some of its
music assets.
Tencent, along with Alibaba affiliate Ant
Group, is also facing regulator scrutiny of its non-bank payment business.
Addressing a question on general regulatory
compliance, Tencent president Martin Lau said the company is very focused on compliance
and risk management, and very self-restrained in terms of the size of
non-payment financial products. "When we look into internal review, and
when we look... to make sure that we are compliant with the spirit of
regulators, it's actually relatively manageable," said Lau. Tencent is
also facing mounting competition from ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, and the
similar short-video platform Douyin, which have made sizeable inroads into the
video games business.
Tencent also said on Thursday the company
is investing in business services, games, and short-form video content.
Tencent, which gets 32 percent of its revenue from video games, unveiled more
than 60 new titles at its annual video gaming conference last week. It is
looking to launch a mobile version of its League of Legends game, and also a
Pokemon game in partnership with Nintendo later this year.
Revenue rose 25 percent to CNY 135.3
billion, versus market expectations of CNY 134.39 billion.
Tencent said revenue from online games grew
by 17 percent.
© Reuters