The company’s CEO attributed the massive improvement to a “substantially expanded” mobile ecosystem. Tencent’s smartphone games net income rose 29% year-over-year.
The number of user accounts is staggering: WeChat (called Weixin in China) and QQ, the company’s two messaging programs, claim 396 million monthly active users, and the number of monthly active users for Tencent’s instant messaging service is 848 million. An analyst’s report in March valued WeChat at as much as $64 billion, according to Bloomberg News.
It is numbers like these that are feeding the anticipation for Alibaba’s coming initial public offering. The two companies have made some 61 acquisitions since 2012 with a total value of $24.5 billion, Bloomberg notes. Both Tencent and Alibaba have been unable to persuade the government to allow them to offer virtual payment systems, but if the government ever changes its mind, these two will likely see even sharper growth.
Tencent shares traded at HK$514 (about $66) on Wednesday, and the company’s market cap is nearly $125 billion.
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