Tencent Holdings Ltd, China's biggest social network and online entertainment firm, said second-quarter revenue rose 19 percent, slightly below estimates, as growth at its core gaming business slowed.
Revenue for the quarter ending June rose to 23.43 billion yuan ($3.67 billion), Tencent said in it earnings statement on Wednesday, compared to the 24.12 billion yuan forecast made in a Thomson Reuters poll of 11 analysts.
Revenue at the gaming unit grew 17 percent year-on-year in the quarter, a slowdown from the previous quarter's 29 percent growth, Tencent said.
Revenue from smartphone games, a priority for the company as the popularity of PC games declines, appeared to be hardest hit, growing at just 11 percent year-on-year compared to 82 percent year-over-year in the previous three months.
Bolstering Tencent's overall revenue was its online advertising unit, which the company said nearly doubled its quarterly revenue to 4 billion yuan.
"We kept leading position in social, gaming and media platforms in the second quarter and made remarkable progress on apps sector," Ma Huateng, CEO of Tencent, was quoted as saying in a press release sent to the Global Times on Wednesday.
Tencent also saw increasing users of its mobile payment service, which brought more subscribers paying for the firm's services including e-books and music, he said.
Tencent, which operates China's most popular messaging app WeChat, has recently ramped up online ads, following the lead of US social media peer Facebook Inc.
Global monthly users of WeChat exceeded 600 million at end of June, with a 37 percent year-on-year growth, the company said, noting WeChat is attracting more overseas users.
Tencent's net income rose 25 percent to 7.31 billion yuan, in line with analyst expectations of 7.32 billion yuan.
