Photo credit: Tencent Most of its total revenues came from its value-added services (VAS) segment – which comprise its virtual goods offerings such as video games and social media – contributing 264.2 billion yuan (US$40.5 billion) compared to nearly 200 billion yuan (US$30.7 billion) in the prior year.
In its earnings report, Tencent said its fee-based VAS subscriptions grew 22% year-on-year to 219 million, with its long form video segment drawing in 123 million video subscriptions, benefitting from popular releases last year.
The company also said that its mobile game title Honour of Kings was the top-grossing mobile game worldwide for the second consecutive year last year. Additionally, the combined monthly active users of WeChat and its Chinese counterpart Weixin grew to 1.23 billion in 2020 from 1.16 billion a year earlier.
Meanwhile, Tencent’s online advertising segment pulled in 82.2 billion yuan (US$12.6 billion), while its fintech and business service segment generated 128.1 billion yuan (US$19.6 billion).
“While 2020 was an unprecedentedly challenging year, we believe our solid operational and financial results testify to our focus on user value and technology innovation,” the company said in its release.
Looking forward, Tencent said it plans to expand its chat experiences and deliver a better social commerce experience within its social media apps. It also aims to strengthen its online advertising capabilities, focusing on recommendation algorithms and analytic services to increase user acquisition efficiency and sales conversion.
The report comes almost two weeks after China’s State Administration for Market Regulation slapped Tencent, along with its rivals Baidu, ByteDance, and Alibaba, with a 500,000 yuan (US$77,000) fine for deals that breached China’s anti-monopoly law.
