Tencent beats revenue forecasts through mobile game success and WeChat; to boost AI research

Tencent Holdings trumped forecasts to post its best-ever quarterly results, driven by higher income from smartphone games, payments and online advertising. Tencent Holdings Ltd, China’s biggest gaming and social media firm by revenue, trumped forecasts to post its best-ever quarterly results, driven by higher income from smartphone games, payments and online advertising. All of Tencent’s existing businesses would benefit from its AI research, he added, in particular its performance The most valuable firm listed in Asia - which is riding a wave of success stemming from the popularity of its social-network based mobile game Honour of Kings - beat analyst forecasts to post a profit of 18.23 billion yuan in the second quarter, up 70 percent from a year ago, the biggest such rise in seven years. The popularity of the fantasy role-playing game Honour of Kings, based on Chinese historical characters, helped Tencent’s smartphone games revenue climb 54 percent to 14.8 billion yuan, surpassing that from PC games for the first time. “We think there is still a lot of growth potential from Tencent’s cloud and payment business,” said Bocom International analyst Connie Gu, who raised the price target for the stock to HK $373 last week.