Tencent third-quarter profit rises 30 percent on investment gains

FILE PHOTO: Tencent Holdings Chairman and CEO Pony Ma (C) visits the Tencent booth following the opening ceremony of the fifth World Internet Conference (WIC) in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, China November 7, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Tencent Holdings (0700.HK) said on Wednesday net profit in the September quarter rose 30 percent, beating estimates, as investment gains helped offset a weak performance in its core gaming business.

Revenue rose 24 percent to 80.6 billion yuan ($11.59 billion), the slowest quarterly growth in more than three years.

Net profit in the July-September quarter rose to 23.3 billion yuan, compared with an average estimate of 19.32 billion yuan, according to 15 analysts polled by Refinitiv.

China, the world’s biggest gaming market, stopped approving new games since March amid a regulatory overhaul, leading to Tencent reporting its first profit decline in more than a decade in the June quarter. Tencent is now cutting the marketing budget for the gaming division.

($1 = 6.9536 Chinese yuan)

Reporting by Sijia Jiang; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman

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(Original source)