Tencent doubles share repurchases as revenue, profit rises

Chinese tech firm Tencent Holdings said on Wednesday that it will at least double the size of its share repurchases from HK$49 billion ($6.2 billion) in 2023 to over HK$100 billion this year, as the company posted a rise in revenue and profit in its latest fiscal report. 

The company reported a full-year revenue of 609 billion yuan, up 10 percent year-on-year. Its full-year profit, on a non-IFRS basis, came in at 161.7 billion yuan, which soared 36 percent year-on-year.

Ma Huateng, chairman and CEO of Tencent, said that emerging businesses including AI large model and Video Account — the short-video section within WeChat — drove the company's high-quality revenue streams. 

"(Such breakthroughs) fueled the company's gross profit growth and plan to step up capital returns to shareholders," he said.

According to Ma, its Video Accounts' total user time spent was more than doubled last year and international contribution to its gaming revenue reached a record 30 percent rise.

He also noted that Tencent's large model Hunyuan has developed into a top-tier foundation model with superior performance in numerical reasoning, logical inference and multi-turn conversations.