Tencent surges 7% after Q1 profit tops estimates

The rebound helped the company reclaim $30bn in market value

FILE PHOTO: WeChat mascots are displayed inside Tencent office at the TIT Creativity Industry Zone in Guangzhou, China May 9, 2017. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo
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Tencent surged after delivering record profit that topped analyst estimates, calming investors who’d braced for a big hit to margins.

The stock climbed as much as 7.1 per cent in Hong Kong, its biggest intraday gain in more than two years. China’s largest social media and gaming company posted a faster than expected 61 per cent jump in net income last quarter as growth on mobile bounced back, outstripping estimates by almost a third. But Thursday’s gain, while translating into a roughly $30 billion (Dh110bn) increase in market value, only helped Tencent recoup a slice of the more than $90bn lost since peaking in January.

Its latest results soothed fears that outsized spending would hammer profitability. The owner of the giant WeChat messaging platform opened its wallet to sustain growth as PC gaming slows, investing in cloud computing, entertainment and physical retail to lock horns with Alibaba. It’s also secured Chinese distribution rights to some of the world’s hottest games, including PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, adapting it into mobile titles to draw in smartphone users.

The gross profit margin in the quarter was more than 50 per cent, higher than the 47 per cent expected by analysts.

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“Analysts were expecting a drag on margins because of increasing contribution from cloud and payments, but it looks like Tencent was pretty good at controlling costs,” said Julia Pan, a Shanghai-based analyst at UOB Kay Hian.

Read more: Tencent’s Record Profit Soothes Fears of Margins Squeeze

Tencent continues to draw the lion’s share of its business from gaming, while counting on advertising and finance via WeChat to drive future growth. WeChat had 1.04 billion monthly active users -- crossing the billion mark for the first time. But QQ, the older of its two social networks, saw users drop 6.4 per cent to 805.5 million at the end of the quarter.

Revenue from Value Added Services, which includes online games and messaging, rose 34 per cent to 46.9bn yuan. The company has however been leery of barraging its users with ads -- on Wednesday, it declared it had raised the maximum number of ads that customers see on WeChat Moments, a function similar to Facebook’s newsfeed, to just two a day from one previously.

“The results were good even without the one-time gains, but the gains made it even better,” said Bhavtosh Vajpayee, a Hong Kong-based research analyst at Bernstein.

But overall costs surged 51 per cent. Tencent executives have signaled a willingness to sacrifice margins in favor of longer term growth in new businesses, though that would depend on growing and engaging a massive user base now primarily confined to China.

Profit was also helped by one-time gains of almost 7.6bn yuan from its investments in arenas like video and news.

“Mobile game growth was very strong, as the first quarter is usually a good season when users spend more time on their devices during the holidays,” said Benjamin Wu, a Shanghai-based analyst with Pacific Epoch.