Catenaa, Wednesday, March 19, 2025- China’s video gaming giant Tencent Holdings recorded an 85% year on year increase in net profits in the fourth quarter, the company said on Wednesday, driven by robust performances in its gaming business.
The operator of the WeChat messaging platform reported a net profit of 51.5 billion yuan ($7.2 billion), after recording revenue of 172.4 billion yuan ($23.83 billion),11% up, for the quarter ended December 31.
LSEG expectation for the net profits for the quarter was 46.3 billion yuan.
“Benefitting from AI-powered enhancements to our advertising platform, higher engagement in Video Accounts, and growth in our evergreen games, we achieved double digit revenue growth while sustaining continued operating leverage in the fourth quarter of 2024,” Ma Huateng, Chairman and CEO of Tencent said.
Starting a few months ago, he said Tencent had reorganized its AI teams to sharpen focus on both fast product innovation and deep model research, increased our AI-related capital expenditures, and increased our R&D and marketing efforts for our AI-native products.
“We believe these stepped-up investments will generate ongoing returns via uplifting productivity in our advertising business and longevity of our games, as well as longer term,” he said.
Tencent said that its international games revenues were 16 billion yuan, reflecting a 15% year-on-year increase, driven by robust performances from Brawl Stars and PUBG MOBILE, alongside the early access release of Path of Exile 2.
Meanwhile, domestic games revenues increased by 23% year-on-year to 33.2 billion yuan, benefitting from: a low base in the prior year’s period; growth in revenue from major games such as Honour of Kings, Peacekeeper Elite and VALORANT; and contributions from recently released games DnF Mobile and Delta Force.
The company has also benefited from regulatory easing in China’s gaming sector following the stringent restrictions of previous years.
