Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd reported on Wednesday a 70% profit surge for the second quarter with strong performance of mobile games business.
Net profit surged to 18.2 billion yuan (2.7 billion U.S. dollars) in the three months ending in June, up 70% year-on-year, according to Tencent's second-quarter earnings report.
The Shenzhen-based company's total revenues in the second quarter grew by 59% year-on-year to 56.6 billion yuan.
Revenue generated by mobile games, including the popular "Honor of Kings", surged 54% to 14.8 billion yuan, for the first time surpassing the PC games revenue 13.6 billion yuan.
The company has signaled plans to extend its entertainment empire built around its well-known social media platform WeChat, which is ubiquitous in China, by buying studios and pushing into content creation.
It said monthly active users of WeChat reached 963 million for the quarter, up 19.5% year-on-year.
The revenue from social networks jumped by 51% year-on-year to more than 12.9 billion yuan, mainly reflecting a revenue growth from digital content services such as live broadcast, video and music, the Hong Kong-listed company said in a statement.
It also reported a strong 55% growth in advertising and said the majority of the increase was generated by growing news feed ads and mobile ads mainly from WeChat.
Tencent shares have rocketed by 70% this year on expectations of continued success in its core games business, and on hopes that it will realize the advertising potential of the widely used WeChat.
