Tencent Holdings Ltd (0700)

[cyclone]

Tencent's Touch Doesn't Guarantee IPO Riches for Investors

By Crystal Tse
November 16, 2017, 3:32 PM GMT+8

Investors are learning that the backing of Tencent Holdings Ltd. isn’t a guarantee of IPO riches.

Stock buyers piled into the initial public offering of the Chinese technology titan’s e-book arm China Literature Ltd., hoping it would repeat Tencent’s 500-fold increase since its own listing. While they’ve been quickly rewarded since China Literature’s debut last week, with shares rising 83 percent through mid-day Thursday, some other Tencent-backed companies that recently went public in the U.S. are far from thriving.

Shares of Sogou Inc., China’s No. 3 search engine, closed below their offer price Wednesday after three straight days of declines. The company, whose biggest shareholder is Tencent, is now down 2.4 percent since its debut in New York last week. Sea Ltd., a Tencent-backed online gaming portal, has fallen 1.9 percent in U.S. trading since its October listing.

More details in https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...-investors

[Wildreamz]

https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/15/tencen...-business/

Tencent’s profit surges 69% thanks to its thriving games business

Tencent, Asia’s highest-valued technology company, has smashed analyst forecasts for its Q3 2017 after it posted a profit of 18 billion RMB ($2.7 billion) on revenue of 65.2 billion RMB ($9.8 billion).

That blew past expectations of 15.7 billion yuan and 61 billion yuan, according to analysts polled by S&P Global Market Intelligence, thanks to its high-performing mobile and PC gaming businesses.

Overall profit was up 69 percent year-on-year and revenue rose by 61 percent thanks to Tencent’s games business, which includes both PC and smartphone.

The older PC unit grew 27 percent to reach sales of 14.6 billion RMB ($2.2 billion), while its
mobile cousin hit 18.2 billion RMB ($2.75 billion) thanks to 84 percent growth. Honour of Kings, the world’s most lucrative mobile app this year, was a stellar contributor, while the firm also owns League Of Legends for PC. Tencent paid tribute to the app, and a handful of others, for the growth but it didn’t break out each title’s sales.

[Wildreamz]

Tencent's Touch Doesn't Guarantee IPO Riches for Investors
...

Invest in Tencent directly is always my preferred choice. Even when compared to investing in holding company like Naspers: https://tinyurl.com/y842ulqc

(vested)

[moneyspinner]

Tencent has became the first Chinese company to be valued at more than $500 billion.
Shares of the 19-year-old company, which is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, rallied to reach HK$418.80 to give it a market cap of HK$3.99 billion which takes past the $500 billion mark. Close rival Alibaba is Asia’s second-highest-valued firm at $474 billion.
Entry to the half-a-trillion-dollar club — which includes Apple, Alphabet, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon — comes a week after Tencent posted a profit of 18 billion RMB ($2.7 billion) on revenue of 65.2 billion RMB ($9.8 billion) for Q3 2017. Overall profit was up 69 percent year-on-year and revenue rose by 61 percent thanks to Tencent’s games business
As SCMP pointed out, a US$9,000 investment in the company’s 2004 IPO would now be worth US$1 million.
Just looking at the last twelve months alone, Tencent’s share price has doubled thanks to impressive earnings reports like Q3.


Tencent’s market cap has more than tripled since March 2014 when it reached $150 billion, surpassing Intel in the process. Writing then, The Wall Street Journal opined that the company “isn’t yet a household name in the U.S., but it should be” and that still applies today.
WeChat, its messaging app that is China’s top social service, is closing in on one billion users overall but it has not managed to replicate that success overseas. Tencent has instead focused on investing itself into global positions.
Its lucrative gaming business focuses on PC and mobile and is the heartbeat of revenue, accounting for $5 billion in the last quarter alone, thanks to smash hits like Honour Of Kings, 2017’s top grossing game, and the acquisition of the companies behind hit games Clash Of Clans (Supercell) and League Of Legends (Riot Games).
Tencent’s investment focus seems to have gone into overdrive over the last year. It has bought up stakes in public companies Tesla, Snap, invested in India-based unicorns Flipkart, messaging app Hike, health portal Practo and Uber rival Ola. Other earlier-stage deals include flying cars, lunar drones and asteroid mining, while longer-standing investments like Sogou (search) and China Literature (e-publishing) have gone public over the past month.
If the recent Snap and Tesla deals are anything to go by, Tencent is likely to commit considerable resources to developing a base among U.S. tech companies. Not only does it believe it can learn from their experiences to boost its business in China, but it can add fresh perspective too — particularly around messaging/WeChat.

[moneyspinner]

Tencent turns to WeChat, games and deals for global strategy


MON, NOV 20, 2017 - 11:50 PM
[HONG KONG] China's biggest social network and gaming firm Tencent Holdings, which last week reported forecast-beating quarterly results, is close to making Malaysia the first foreign country to roll out its WeChat ecosystem, an executive told Reuters.
Tencent has made a "breakthrough" in gaining an e-payment license in Malaysia for local transactions, and plans a launch early next year, senior vice president SY Lau said in an interview.
The move pits Shenzhen-based Tencent, Asia's most valuable listed company, against rival Alibaba Group as they scramble for new growth opportunities outside China.
"Malaysia is actually quite large in the sense that we have 20 million WeChat users, huge potential, and the market is quite warm towards internet products from China," Mr Lau said.



Southeast Asia, home to more than 600 million people and some of the world's fastest-growing economies, has been a key battleground for China's tech titans fighting for deals. Ethnic Chinese make up more than a fifth of Malaysia's population.
SEE ALSO: Hong Kong: Shares rise as Tencent hits a record on robust earnings



WeChat Pay and Alibaba's Alipay, which dominate China's digital payment market, have sought to expand their global footprint, although that push has so far been limited to payment services for Chinese outbound tourists. They can scan-and-pay for purchases in 34 countries or regions via Alipay and 13 via WeChat Pay, according to the companies.
Alipay's parent company Ant Financial has joint ventures in seven markets for local digital payments services, which operate independently under the partnerships' brand names.
Alibaba is looking to build a global payment system, while Tencent is more interested in generating traffic for WeChat - two different strategies, some bankers and investors say.
WeChat has more users, but Alipay's aggregate transaction volume is higher, according to JP Morgan's John Hall, though other investors note that WeChat Pay can also process large transactions if it's used on e-commerce platforms.
One challenge for Tencent, say analysts, is that its success in China cannot be easily exported to other markets.
Tencent is "not in a hurry" to speed up its overseas expansion or increase the monetisation rate of its digital assets, Mr Lau said.
"We walk our own path at our own pace ... and, to be honest, there is really quite a lot to do in China," he said.
WeChat, which has ballooned from a messaging app to an all-in-one platform with 980 million monthly active users, could be the "killer product" to spearhead expansion abroad, Mr Lau said, as its embedded payment function draws more services.
WeChat, with an open platform of mini-programmes, was a key revenue contributor for Tencent in the third quarter. Social and other advertising revenue rose 63 per cent, while payment and cloud helped "other business" post a 143 per cent jump "Honour of Kings", Tencent's top-grossing battle game that led an 84 per cent increase in quarterly smartphone gaming revenue, also owes its success to the network help of WeChat, and is expected to find it tougher to crack Western markets, analysts say.
Tencent this month delayed the launch of the game's US edition, "Arena of Valor", to next year to "further polish additional gameplay and social features".
After games and social media, most of Tencent's other businesses are in digital content, including Spotify equivalent Tencent Music and YouTube equivalent Tencent Video, which also makes its own dramas.
Mr Lau said the ultimate aim was to export culture from China to the rest of the world, rather than the other way round, which he acknowledged was challenging.
"What we're aiming to create is 'super IPs' (intellectual property) that leverage our different businesses from upstream to downstream," Mr Lau said, citing Disneyland and the James Bond movies as successful practices in the West.
A big business for Tencent's recently-listed publishing arm, China Literature, is to sell its popular novels and have them turned into dramas and video games by Tencent's other business lines.
Tencent this month announced a plan involving 10 billion yuan ($1.51 billion) of investment to boost its creative content ecosystem, though it gave no timeframe for the investment.
Company president Martin Lau - no relation to SY - said on an earnings call last week that Tencent would keep investing in digital content, especially online video, to draw more time from more paying customers.
Overseas acquisitions will remain a key way of enhancing Tencent's global access and competitiveness, SY Lau said.
Independent technology analyst Richard Windsor said Tencent's 2016 acquisition of Supercell gave it a strong position in gaming, while the move to buy a stake in social media firm Snapchat is another piece in the jigsaw.
"It increasingly looks as if Tencent is embarking on a circumnavigation of the digital life pie in order to build an ecosystem to challenge the Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook dominance of consumer digital services," he said, noting it's at a "super early stage" in that process.
Tencent will likely seek more overseas acquisitions, Mr Windsor added, which, beyond being expensive, could challenge Tencent in integrating all its digital assets at home and abroad.
Tencent has struggled to monetise its dominance over the Chinese digital life, he said, adding that's why he sees more upside in Tencent's market valuation, and prefers it to Alibaba.
REUTERS

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Tencent beats Jack Ma's Alibaba to become first Asian company valued over US$500b

TUE, NOV 21, 2017 - 10:24 AM
ANN WILLIAMS[/url]

[img=719x0]http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sites/default/files/styles/article_img/public/image/2017/11/21/2017-11-13T035856Z_140706282_RC145202B000_RTRMADP_3_TENCENT-RESULTS_0.JPG?itok=3cLaN_QX[/img]
PHOTO: REUTERS 
CHINA'S Tencent just became the first Asian company to crack the illustrious US$500 billion club.
The Hong Kong-listed Internet giant, known for its WeChat messaging app and online games, saw its shares rally to HK$420 on Monday, bringing its market value to HK$3.99 trillion (S$693.59 billion) at the close.
With that line crossed, Tencent is now closing in on the likes of Facebook and Amazon. Top of the pole is Apple, with pundits predicting the iPhone maker could be the first to break the US$1 trillion mark in the months ahead.
Tencent's market cap is also now above Jack Ma's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, which stands at US$474.15 billion, with Baidu far behind at US$82.97 billion.



It brings the personal wealth of Tencent's founder and chief executive Ma Huateng - also known as Pony Ma and no relation to Jack - close to US$47 billion.
[url=http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/technology/tencent-turns-to-wechat-games-and-deals-for-global-strategy]SEE ALSO: Tencent turns to WeChat, games and deals for global strategy



Tencent's stock this year alone is up 121.4 per cent. The shares have rallied 11,251 per cent since the company went public in 2004 at at HK$3.70 a share. Analysts say it can go further.
"Some of this year's best performers are worth holding as long-term bulls," said Wang Menghai, a Shanghai-based money manager at Fullgoal Fund Management Co told Bloomberg. "It would be a wrong decision to sell it just for some short-term gain."
 
[Image: awtencent21web.JPG]
 
CNBC credits Tencent's meteoric rise to its continued revenue growth, massive user base and investments into new areas. Last week, the Chinese company reported a 69 per cent year-on-year rise in net profit for the third quarter to 18 billion yuan (S$3.7 billion), beating market forecasts.
Its WeChat, China's most popular messaging service, has close to one billion users.
Online and mobile games, another big revenue stream, brought in over US$4 billion in sales last quarter. Its fantasy role-playing game Honour of Kings, which is based on Chinese historical characters, is so popular that Tencent had to introduce curbs on play time earlier this year after reports of children being seriously addicted to it. The game will debut in the US next year.
Tencent also acquired a majority stake in Finnish smartphone maker Supercell, the company behind the popular "Clash of Clans" mobile game.
Other fast-growing parts of the business include digital content such as video, as well as online advertising, said CNBC.
Tencent president Martin Lau said in last week's earnings call that its Youtube equivalent, Tencent Video, has become the video streaming service with the largest paying subscriber base in China, at 43 million subscriptions.
Over the past year, several of Tencent's subsidiaries have made stellar debuts on stock exchanges in Hong Kong and the US, most recently its online publishing platform China Literature which nearly doubled in price on its firt trading day earlier this month.
Their genuine prowess aside, the Financial Times points out that the rise of China's tech giants has been greatly aided by Beijing's ban on the US titans - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google. There is nothing to rival WeChat and while Amazon was let in, it was quickly quashed by Alibaba's Tmall and Taobao e-commerce sites.

[cyclone]

Tencent Has Worst Week Since 2015 After $274 Billion Rally

By Moxy Ying
December 1, 2017, 10:52 AM GMT+8 Updated on December 1, 2017, 5:04 PM GMT+8

Tencent Holdings Ltd. posted its biggest weekly loss since August 2015 amid concern a recent rally was excessive.

The technology company retreated 3.3 percent Friday, taking its decline this week to 7.4 percent. Tencent’s shares have more than doubled this year, adding $274 billion in value through last week, while the company’s market value topped that of Facebook Inc. for a period last month. As part of a quarterly rebalancing on Friday, the stock’s weighting on Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index will fall to 10 percent from 11.7 percent.

More details in https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...-21-months

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Tencent Seen Doubling by Stock-Picker Who's Already Up 6,000%

By Charles Stein
December 6, 2017, 1:00 PM GMT+8

OppenheimerFunds’ Justin Leverenz owes a lot to Tencent Holdings Ltd.

The stock, which he started accumulating in 2007 when it traded for about HK$6 (77 cents) or about 1/60th of its current price, has helped make his emerging-market mutual fund the biggest in the world.

Tencent and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. -- China’s other internet giant and another top holding at Leverenz’s $37.9 billion Oppenheimer Developing Markets Fund -- could double in price over the next five years to 10 years as they expand worldwide, according to Leverenz. Not “the investing opportunity of a lifetime” that Tencent once presented, the fund manager said, but not too shabby.

More details in https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...y-up-6-000

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Tencent buys stake in Chinese supermarket chain, waging war with Alibaba in new retail
The tech giant buys a 5pc interest in Shanghai-listed Yonghui Superstores

Zheng Yangpeng
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 12 December, 2017, 9:53am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 12 December, 2017, 9:53am

Tencent Holdings has agreed to purchase a stake in one of China’s largest supermarket chains, Yonghui Superstores, in the latest move to step up the war with Alibaba Group Holding in the “new retail” battleground of online-offline shopping.

Shanghai-listed Yonghui announced on Monday evening that Tencent would buy a 5 per cent stake at an unspecified price. At the same time, Tencent would increase its investment in Yonghui Yunchuang Technology, which will give the technology giant a 15 per cent interest in the Yonghui subsidiary.

Yonghui shares jumped to its daily limit on Friday, following a report by Caijing magazine of Tencent’s agreement to invest heavily in Super Species, the fresh grocery store brand of Yonghui. Yonghui’s shares have been suspended since Monday.

More details in http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/a...ar-alibaba

[Wildreamz]

With this attitude, they will be a Trillion Dollar company someday, and then some.

(Vested)