Tencent announced total revenue of USD11.693 bn for Q1 2018, an increase of 48% from Q1 2017. Monthly active user accounts (“MAU”) of QQ was 805.5 million, a decrease of 6.4% YoY. Smart device MAU was up by 2.4% year-on-year to 694.1 million. WeChat MAU exceeded 1 billion.
Tencent made record profit of RMB23.973 billion (US$3.812 million) in Q1 2018, up 65% over Q1 2017. Non-GAAP profit attributable to equity holders of the Company was RMB18.313 billion (US$2.912 billion), an increase of 29% year-on-year. Capital expenditure was RMB6.318 billion. Free cash flow was RMB13 billion, down 46% year-on-year.
Revenues from online games grew by 26% to RMB28.778 billion, mainly driven by smartphone games, including existing titles such as Honour of Kings, and newly launched titles such as MU Awakening and QQ Speed Mobile.
Communications and Social
QQ: Monthly active user accounts (“MAU”) of QQ was 805.5 million, a decrease of 6.4% YoY. Smart device MAU was up by 2.4% year-on-year to 694.1 million. QQ KanDian, the news feed service within QQ, achieved over 80 million DAU.
Weixin and WeChat: Combined MAU was 1,040.0 million, representing year-on-year growth of 10.9%. Tencent opened up the platform of Mini-Programs to third-party game developers in late March and over 500 Mini Games are now available. Check out WeChat Mini-Programs status report 2018 here.
REPORT: WeChat digital ecosystem 2018: WeChat Pay, Official Accounts, Mini-Programs
Online Games
Smartphone games achieved approximately RMB21.7 billion revenues, up 68% year-on-year, driven by in-house mobile titles such as Honour of Kings and QQ Speed Mobile. Honour of Kings remained as the highest grossing smartphone game in China’s iOS Top Grossing Chart. New title QQ Speed Mobile became the second-highest smartphone game in China’s iOS Top Grossing Chart during Q1 2018.
PC client games achieved approximately RMB14.1 billion revenues, flat compared with the prior year period. Active users declined due to the continued time shift to mobile devices while core user engagement remained largely stable.
Digital Content
Total fee-based VAS subscriptions grew by 24% year-on-year to 147 million, primarily driven by video and music streaming services. Tencent Video reinforced its industry leadership in China by mobile DAU and subscriptions. Mobile daily video views increased by over 60% year-on-year.
Total video revenues were up 75% year-on-year, in particular, video subscription revenues grew by 85% year-on-year.
Online Advertising
Online Advertising business achieved 55% year-on-year growth in revenues.
For media advertising, revenues grew by 31% year-on-year. Within which, video ad revenues increased 64% year-on-year due to more pre-roll ads benefiting from the growth in video views, and Tencent’s enhanced capability to develop creative ad formats within original productions. Video and news revenues decreased quarter-to-quarter due to the low seasonality for advertising activity in Q1 2018.
For social and others advertising, the 69% year-on-year increase in revenues was driven by an expanded advertiser base boosting ad fill rates in WeChat Moments, and higher CPC for Mobile Ad Network. The sequential decrease in revenues was mainly due to the low seasonality in Q1 2018. Amid the low seasonality, QQ KanDian revenues increased due to fast growth in traffic.
Weibo monthly active users reached 411M, 93% from mobile in Q1 2018