Quick Take: Tencent’s Fourth-Quarter Net Profit Nearly Doubles

Tencent Holdings Ltd., China’s biggest social media and online entertainment company, saw fourth-quarter net profit almost double to 20.8 billion yuan ($3.28 billion), helped by strong payment services and its video-streaming business.

Revenue for the three months that ended Dec. 31 rose 51% to 66.4 billion yuan, the company said in a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Wednesday.

Full-year net profit rose 74% to 71.5 billion yuan in 2016, while revenue jumped 56% to 237.7 billion yuan.

Tencent saw monthly active users of WeChat, China’s largest social media mobile app, exceed 1 billion after the Lunar New Year in February, up from 980 million as at September.

The internet behemoth also said its video-streaming service, Tencent Video, achieved rapid growth in traffic last year, seeing paying users lured in by the popularity of its exclusive drama series, movies and self-commissioned content.

Tencent said it was “the leading video-streaming platform in China” with over 137 million mobile daily active users during the fourth quarter, and 56 million subscriptions as of the end of 2017.

Looking ahead, the Shenzhen-based company plans more aggressive investments this year to strengthen its positioning in the areas of online video, payment services, cloud services, artificial intelligence and smart retail.

Contact reporter Jason Tan (jasontan@caixin.com)