Chinese online giant Tencent posts 61% rise in net profit

The logo of Tencent at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing. The company posted a huge rise in earnings. Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

Chinese social media and gaming giant Tencent reported on Wednesday a 61 per cent rise in net profit for the first quarter of the year, beating estimates, thanks to strong mobile games revenue.

Asia's second-most valuable listed company said net profit for the quarter was 23.29 billion yuan (Dh13.44bn), against an average estimate of 17.5bn yuan from 11 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. That represented a quarter-on-quarter rise of 12 per cent.

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Revenue rose 48 per cent to 73.53bn yuan, beating the 70.93bn yuan average estimate of 14 analysts, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Smartphone games revenue, the largest revenue contributor, jumped 68 per cent to 21.7bn yuan while revenue from the more lucrative category of PC games was flat at 14.1bn yuan.

User numbers of Tencent's popular WeChat messenger app reached 1.04 billion.