Tencent Beats Facebook To Become World’s 5th Most Valuable Company!
Tencent surpassed Facebook and in the process also became the most valuable Asian tech company, ahead of Alibaba
The Internet Giant from China Tencent Holdings today surpassed social media giant Facebook in terms of market value. Yesterday, it also achieved the feat of becoming the first tech company from Asia to cross the $500 billion valuation mark.
Tencent Holdings has diversified businesses, which primarily involves gaming, smartphones, news and social media among others. Tencent owns the biggest social network of China, WeChat, and also is the biggest Chinese gaming firm, which is popular for their smartphone games like Honour of Kings and Clash of Clans (owns a majority share).
The technology firm owns China’s biggest social networking platform WeChat which currently drives around 980 million monthly active users with around 38 billion messages sent every day.
Tencent Vs Facebook: Diversified Business Model
The messaging-to-payment WeChat app accounted for a major part of their value, while their Youtube alternative in China, Tencent Video is also the largest video streaming service in the country with the highest number of paying subscribers in China.
Tencent Holdings overtook the social media giant Facebook’s value in terms of market capitalization. The company closed at $519.4 billion at the US markets last day.
The success helped the Chinese tech firm’s stock to double more than twice this year, and made it the first Asian company to surpass the $500 billion market value mark. At present, Tencent Holdings is the most valuable company in Asia worth $522 billion as of 22nd November, which outpaced a 36% rise in their benchmark Hang Seng Index.
Above Tencent, there’s Apple at number one spot with a market capitalisation of around $873 billion. On the second it’s Alphabet Inc, which owns Google, followed by Microsoft Corp and Amazon.
The company is led by Chinese billionaire Pony Ma. Tencent has reported a 69% rise in their third quarter net profit.
Tencent Is Rising Fast
Tencent also surpassed Jack Ma’s Alibaba, which held the previous tag of the most valuable company in China and Asia. Alibaba Group ranks second among the Asian firms with a market capitalization of $481.5 Billion.
Tencent is now close behind Amazon, which currently has a market capitalization of $542.7 Billion.
The technology major listed their stocks in Hong Kong and went public in 2004 at 3.70 Hong Kong dollars per share.
Since 2004, the shares have rallied over a breathtaking 11,000%. The present stocks of Tencent in 2017 saw a rise of 126.69% alone.
Tencent Holdings still is not a well-known company outside its home country China unlike Alibaba. The company has a sprawling line of businesses which includes gaming, smartphones, social media, news and content.
Games Provided Substantial Revenue
Smartphone games are a key part of their success apart from WeChat. The online and mobile games division alone brought around over $4 billion in revenue in the last quarter. Back 2016, Tencent Holdings acquired a major stake in Finnish smartphone maker Supercell, which owns the immensely popular Clash of Clans mobile game.
The company has been trying to move outside of China, but are not interested in expansion with their own products. Tencent is close to make Malaysia their first foreign country to roll out WeChat ecosystem, going directly against Alibaba, as they are looking for newer growth opportunities outside China.
The firm has been making investments across several companies in the U.S. and Asia lately. Recently it acquired stakes in Tesla and Snap. It has also invested in multiple startups in Asia, which even includes India’s largest cab aggregator Ola.
