Tencent is present: in the video game market as well as in the area of messenger and streaming services.
The company holds shares in numerous well-known companies, from game developers to car manufacturers.
Shenzhen - The metropolis of Shenzhen in southern China, in close proximity to Hong Kong, is considered the Silicon Valley of the Far East.
Numerous international companies have their headquarters there - including Tencent.
Hong Kong-listed Internet company Tencent Holdings Ltd.
is one of the largest in China and one of the most valuable companies in the world.
In 2020, it had total sales of 482.1 billion Chinese yuan.
That equates to around $ 73.6 billion.
Tencent: Founder and History
Ma Huateng, known as Pony Ma - the current chairman - and Zhang Zhidong (Tony Zhang) founded the Internet company Tencent in November 1998. Zhang now takes the position of CTO (Chief Technology Officer). The first product jumped on the boom of the messenger ICQ in 1999: Tencent launched the OICQ service. The name of the product was later renamed Tencent QQ due to the similarity with the model.
The messenger celebrated immense success in China.
Within a year of its inception, Tencent became China's first internet company to make a profit.
Five million people downloaded QQ in the first year.
The rapid growth made it necessary to expand the server infrastructure.
Lacking the necessary funds, Ma and Zhang found two holding companies: the Boston International Data Group and the Hong Kong telecommunications company Pacific Century Cyberworks (PCCW).
To this day, QQ is by far the most widely used instant messenger service in Asia.
At the end of December 2019, the solution had around 647 million users on mobile devices alone.
The service also runs on Windows and Mac systems.
Tencent: IPO, growth and new products
Tencent has been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since June 16, 2004, and on the MSCI Emerging Markets since May 2007.
This share index reflects the stock market development of the most important emerging countries.
The Internet company has been listed on the Hang Seng Index since June 2008, making it the leading stock market index in Asia.
After the messenger service QQ, Tencent developed the Qzone social network in 2005.
Three years later, more than 100 million people were using the Chinese equivalent of Facebook.
In 2019 the platform had more than 500 million users.
This makes Qzone the most active social network in the world.
In the 2000s, Tencent not only worked on expanding the messenger QQ and on new products and solutions.
Research is an important factor in corporate strategy.
In 2007, Tencent invested more than $ 15 million in building the Tencent Research Institute, the first Internet technology research and development institute in China.
Tencent: Business areas and holdings
In June 2008 Tencent founded a joint venture with MIH, a subsidiary of the South African media group Naspers.
MIH is responsible for the Internet division of the service provider from Cape Town.
Two years later, Naspers and Tencent took a joint stake in the Russian Mail.Ru Group, which at that time was still active under the name Digital Sky Technologies.
Naspers himself now owns 31.2 percent of Tencent.
The strategic partnership was the beginning of a series of investments.
Last but not least, Tencent opened up new business areas.
Today the internet company is active in numerous branches.
This includes in particular the following:
Online media
Value-added services
Online Advertising
Gaming
Tencent in the gaming business
Tencent's list of business areas is long - as is the list of holdings. In 2008 the company entered the gaming industry. Due to the joint venture with Naspers / Mail.Ru, it came into the possession of shares in the game company Riot Games. The US-American gaming company made a name for itself above all with the PC games series "League of Legends". By 2011, Tencent increased its stake to 92.78 percent through an investment of 400 million US dollars, and in early 2016 the Chinese took over the company completely.
The gaming industry continued in 2012.
With the acquisition of 48.4 percent of the shares in Epic Games for 330 million US dollars, one of the best-known and largest game developers was partially owned by Tencent.
Among other things, Epic Games is developing the survival shooter "Fortnite".
The internet company is also involved in the following companies from the gaming industry:
Supercell (develop, among other things, the strategy game "Clash of Clans")
Activison Blizzard (known for titles like "Call of Duty", "World of Warcraft" and "Crash Bandicoot")
Ubisoft (responsible for "Assassin's Creed", "Watch Dogs" and "Rayman")
Paradox Interactive ("Valhalla Chronicles", "Stellaris")
Funcom (best known game is the online role-playing game "Anarchy Online")
Frontier Development (known for "Planet Coaster", "Jurassic World Evolution")
Grinding Gear Games (developer of "Path of Exile")
Dontnod Entertainment (responsible for titles like "Life Is Strange" as well as "Vampyr" and "Remember Me")
Digital Extremes (developer of the games "Unreal", "Unreal Tournament", "Warframe", "Startrek")
Apart from Riot Games, Funcom and Digital Extremes are now wholly owned by the Tencent group.
With QQ Games, Tencent developed its own multiplayer online portal in 2003.
The game distribution platform WeGame has been online since 2017.
Tencent: Communication and Media
The company became world famous with its in-house messenger Tencent QQ.
In January 2011, with the increasing popularity of smartphones, QQ lost its attractiveness.
Instead of providing the software with new functions, the Chinese released WeChat, a new chat service for smartphones.
QQ continued and established itself as a stationary messenger.
WeChat started as a pure messenger and has since been expanded to include numerous functions, including a payment system based on the model of Google and Apple Pay.
In China, WeChat Pay is one of the two dominant online payment services in China, alongside Alipay from Alibaba.
The WeChat app has more than 1.2 billion users worldwide today.
Around 100 million of them live outside of China.
Tencent also has a 12.1 percent stake in the messenger service Snapchat.
Tencent: Other products and services
Tencent has acquired numerous other companies, services and brands or has invested in various companies throughout its history.
In addition, there are our own developments.
The other business areas at a glance:
music
QQ Player, in-house music player released in 2008
Participation in the streaming service Spotify (7.5 percent)
E-commerce
Participation in the Chinese online trading platform JD.com (18.1 percent)
PaiPai, buying and selling platform developed in 2006
Tenpay, online payment method
Web browsers and email clients
Tencent Traveler
Foxmail
Participation in Mail.Ru (7.4 percent)
Electromobility
Participation in the electric car manufacturer Tesla (5 percent)
Participation in the online spatial data service Here (10 percent)
Co-founder of Future Mobility Corporation (now Byton) for electric car development and production
Tencent: Company figures at a glance - sales, growth, employees
Looking at the development from 2019 to 2021, Tencent shares gained 65 percent in value.
2009 was a record year: The value of the share grew by more than 215 percent on average for the year.
The sales figures are also developing positively.
In 2019, the internet company posted growth of a fifth compared to the previous year.
Annual sales rose 21 percent and profits 22 percent.
Total sales that year were 48.8 billion euros (377.3 billion yuan).
In 2020, Tencent once again posted strong growth that far exceeded the 2019 growth.
In the third quarter, profits soared by almost 90 percent.
Tencent posted sales of around 16.1 billion euros (125.45 billion yuan) in those three months of the year alone.
The video game division was not least responsible for this.
The number of Tencent employees developed in line with the sales and profit figures.
In 2016, around 38,700 people worked for the internet company.
In 2017 there were already 44,796, in 2018 there were 54,309 employees.
At the end of 2019, Tencent reported 62,885 employees.
The majority work at the company's headquarters in Shenzhen.
Tencent also has offices in Amsterdam, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo and Palo Alto.
