Investment income boosts Tencent, Alibaba profits

Chinese internet giants Tencent Holdings Ltd and Alibaba Group have harvested more fruits from their investment, according to a report by Financial Times.

Their latest financial reports show nearly one-third of their pretax income in the third quarter of the year (Q3) ending Sept 30 was investment income, the report said.

Tencent, seeing revenue of 80.6 billion yuan ($11.72 billion) in Q3, an increase of 24 percent year-on-year, said in its financial report that the profit attributable to its equity holders for the quarter rose 30 percent year-on-year to 23.33 billion yuan, which was mainly due to higher net other gains generated from investment-related items compared to the same period last year.

The total investment assets of the company reached 366.4 billion yuan by the end of Q3, accounting for 54 percent of its total assets, while they were less than 5.3 billion yuan by the end of 2010, accounting for less than 15 percent of the company's total assets, finance.ifeng.com reported.

The report by Financial Times said for Tencent, the proportion of profits from investments rose from 7 percent in 2016 to 22 percent in 2017, while the share increased from 14 percent in 2017 to 30 percent by March for Alibaba.

In Q3, as Tencent's online game revenues decreased by 4 percent year-on-year to 25.81 billion, investment gains particularly fueled the company's earnings, the report said.

For Alibaba, investment disposals contributed 4.5 billion yuan to its interest and net income of 6.6 billion yuan in Q3 and most were from selling a residual holding in Meituan Dianping, a provider of on-demand online services backed by Tencent, according to the report.

For a long time, Tencent and Alibaba have been active in merger and acquisition activities. The report, citing information from a person close to Tencent, said the number of companies listed on the giant's portfolio nearly approaches 750, while it is around 350 for Alibaba.

It said the two companies have different investment strategies.

Alibaba, preferring majority control or full ownership, focuses more on its core strategy of new retail and key areas of services, logistics and international expansion, while Tencent favors taking minority stakes in companies that it can feed traffic to from WeChat and that can make up its absence in the e-commerce and retail businesses, according to the report.