Tencent on Wednesday reported a 15% jump in second-quarter revenue as a strong performance in its gaming unit and AI investments boosted growth.
Here’s how Tencent did in the first quarter of 2025:
- Revenue: 184.504 billion Chinese yuan ($25.7 billion), compared to 161.117 billion Chinese yuan in the same period last year
- Operating profit: 63.052 billion yuan, versus 57.313 billion yuan last year
Domestic games revenue, which accounts for sales from China, rose 17% year-on-year to 40.4 billion yuan thanks to the performance of the company’s newly-released “Delta Force” game and evergreen titles such as “Honor of Kings,” “VALORANT” and “Peacekeeper Elite.”
Revenue from its international gaming business totaled 18.8 billion yuan, a 35% year-on-year increase driven by games such as “PUBG Mobile,” and the recently-released “Dune: Awakening.”
Meanwhile, Tencent said that AI-driven improvements to the company’s advertising platform and Weixin transaction ecosystem helped boost marketing services revenue by 20% in the quarter to 35.8 billion yuan.
“During the second quarter of 2025, we delivered double-digit revenue and non-IFRS operating profit growth on a year-on-year basis, as we invested in, and also benefitted from, utilising AI,” said Tencent CEO Ma Huateng.
Tencent said its capital expenditures surged 119% to 19.1 billion yuan in the second quarter, as the tech giant invested in AI upgrades for advertising, its gaming business and social media service Weixin.
The Shenzhen-headquartered company’s music unit posted better-than-expected results thanks to growth in strong growth from subscription and non-subscription online music revenue, according to Citi’s Alicia Yap. The firm said Tencent Music had 124 million music subscribers, up slightly from 123 million subscribers noted in Tencent’s first-quarter report.
Looking ahead to the second half of the year, Tencent Music “continues to drive high-quality growth in subscription revenues, growth momentum from fans economy, concert and ad revs will support faster-than-previously expected full year growth,” Yap said in a note.
Tencent, like other cloud computing firms, has put a higher focus on selling artificial intelligence tools as a way to boost revenue and differentiate its offerings from those of its rivals.
Earlier this summer, Tencent revealed it is looking to bring its cloud computing capabilities to Europe, pitching it against U.S. hyperscalers Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet-owned Google, which collectively make up 70% share of Europe’s cloud market.
“We are striving to bring further benefits of AI to consumers and enterprises through powering more use cases within Weixin, driving usage of our AI native app Yuanbao, and upgrading the capabilities of our HunYuan foundation models,” Huateng said in the Wednesday earnings release.
— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.
Source: CNBC