Tencent fourth-quarter net income up 12.9 pct, slowest since early 2012

Tencent Holdings Ltd, China's biggest listed tech firm, saw its fourth-quarter net income rise 12.9 percent, its slowest pace in seven quarters, as selling and marketing expenses rose.

Net income for the quarter ending December was 3.91 billion yuan ($631.46 million), in line with analyst estimates of 3.97 billion yuan.

Tencent's revenues climbed 40 percent to 16.97 billion yuan ($2.74 billion), as the company gained ground in e-commerce which accounted for one-fifth of revenues in the last three months of 2013 versus 15 percent of revenues in the previous quarter.

But selling and marketing expenses jumped 39 percent to 2 billion yuan in the fourth quarter from the previous quarter.

Global monthly active users of Tencent's WeChat, China's most widely used messaging app, rose 5.7 percent from the previous quarter to 355 million, its slowest rate of growth as the company revised its user numbers upward from the previous quarter.

Before the results were announced, Tencent shares closed down 1.82 percent in trading on Wednesday, versus a 0.07 percent fall in the Hang Seng Index.

On the same day, Tencent announced that Zhang Zhidong will no longer serve as the company's Executive Director and will resign as Chief Technology Officer in six months' time. Zhang will serve as a lifetime honorary advisor and focus his energy on nurturing young talent.

Zhang co-founded Tencent with CEO Ma Huateng in 1998 and had headed the company's tech team since then.