Tencent posts better-than-expected profit in Q1

Fueled by rising earnings on online games, Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd reported a growth of 33 percent year-on-year in net profit in the first quarter, beating analysts' estimates.

Net income climbed 33 percent year-on-year to a record 9.18 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) in the three months ending in March, the Hong Kong-listed company said on Wednesday. That compares with the 8.71 billion-yuan average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Ma Huateng, Chairman and CEO of Tencent, said the company has made progress in further building up its social, games and media platforms.

"Our smart phone games achieved healthy user and revenue growth, thanks to our expanding portfolio of popular titles, operational expertise, and extensive user reach," he said in a statement.

Out of the 32 billion yuan revenue Tencent generated in the first quarter, about 25 billion yuan was from the Value Added Services unit, which includes online games and messaging.

Its online games revenue grew by 28 percent year-on-year to 17.1 billion in the first quarter with contributions mainly from new smartphone games such as CrossFire Mobile, Honor of Kings, The Legend of MIR 2 and Naruto Mobile.

The monthly active users of Weixin and WeChat together reached 762 million at the end of the quarter, representing a year-on-year growth of 39 percent. The solid growth in users in turn drove up Tencent's online advertising business with the unit's revenue surging by 73 percent year-on-year to 4.7 billion yuan in the first quarter.