High expectations make for volatile shares, and for opportunity. The Chinese internet group Tencent released first-quarter results on Wednesday. Sales and profits beat analysts’ targets by 5 per cent. On Thursday, the stock dropped as much as 4 per cent before cooler traders pushed it back up.
Tencent’s main businesses did well. Revenues from online games (more than half of the $5bn total) rose three-tenths year on year. More impressive: fees gathered from social networks, including China’s dominant chat app WeChat, grew nearly one half to $1.2bn — showing that the company is able to charge for add-ons and content.
Revenue growth from advertising was disappointing. Although up 73 per cent year on year, this was a marked slowdown from a more than doubling last quarter. Seasonality was partly to blame, but Tencent also said that brands are reluctant to commit to marketing spend against China’s uncertain economic outlook.