Tencent earnings beat estimates

Shanghai: Chinese internet giant Tencent said on Wednesday its net profit jumped 35 percent in the second quarter, as the company continued to wriggle out of Beijing´s crackdown on online gaming and build mobile game growth.

Shenzhen-based Tencent said net profit was 24.1 billion yuan ($3.5 billion) in the three months ending June 30, beating an average estimate from Bloomberg analysts of 21.1 billion yuan.

Total revenues were up 21 percent at 88.8 billion yuan, primarily driven by mobile game growth, commercial payment services, and digital content businesses.

Tencent´s smartphone games revenues climbed 26 percent in the three months. But Tencent was hammered by a Chinese government crackdown on gaming which launched last year and led to a months-long license approval freeze.

The tech giant maintained revenue growth from the likes of popular game "Honour of Kings", and began charging users for newer title "Peacekeeper Elite" -- a toned-downed version of its now-dropped hit game "PlayerUnknown´s Battlegrounds" -- clocking up more than 50 million daily active users since its launch in May.

Tencent said it has dropped the original title entirely and the new version, which won government approval, was developed in conjunction with China´s air force.

Although it was showing signs of recovery, the gamaing crackdown shaved around $250 billion off Tencent´s stock market value by the end of last year and battered profits towards the end of 2018.

"We expect gaming revenue to re-accelerate starting from the second quarter onward," David Dai, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Bernstein told Bloomberg News. Shares in the Hong Kong-listed company rose 1.80 percent Wednesday ahead of the update.