Mar. 22 (NBD) - Tencent Holdings Limited (Tencent) delivered its full-year financial results of last year (audited) and the 4th quarter of 2017 (unaudited) on Wednesday night. According to its company filing, the company reaped 237.8 billion yuan (37.6 billion U.S. dollars) in revenue last year, up 56 percent year on year. Revenue coming from its online gaming services increased 38 percent to 97.88 billion yuan (15.5 billion U.S. dollars), accounting for 41 percent of its total revenue.  

Compared to 2016, the gaming sector maintained steady growth, but it took up a smaller proportion to its total revenue in its 2017 fiscal year. However, it still took a large slice of market.

NBD noticed that new games, such as Honor of Kings, Dragon Nest and Tian Long Ba Bu, are major revenue contributors. In addition, older PC games such as Dungeon & Fighter and League of Legends still keep turning profits.

In 2018, the company expects to expand its footprint further into the pan-entertainment sector. Earlier this year, it spent about 7 billion yuan (1.1 billion U.S. dollar) in investing live streaming platform Huya and Douyu, and 3.3 billion yuan (522.4 million U.S. dollars) to become the second-largest shareholder of a content creator New Classics Media.

After keeping investing in the sector for years, 2018 is expected to be a year of harvest for Tencent as a number of unicorns backed by the giant are predicted to finish IPO in 1 to 2 years.

Besides revenue from culture and entertainment field, Tencent's revenue from non-cultural and non-entertainment services surged 153 percent to 43.34 billion yuan (6.9 billion U.S. dollars) year on year.

Tencent said the growth was mainly driven by its payment services and cloud services. But detailed data hasn't been disclosed in the report yet.

Tencent is also expanding its offline services with the focus on smart retail. Over the past year, the company was building its retail empire through investing in or cooperating with retail giants such as JD, Yonghui Superstores, Vip.com, and Walmart China.

On the same day when Tencent released its financial report of 2017, its vice president Lin Jinghua delivered a public speech, saying that services such as facial recognition, password-free payment, after-sale services, and package tracking servcies have been available on Wechat's public accounts and mini programs. According to Lin, Tencent has established a smart retail unit which will share user platforms, big data technologies, premium user experience and connectivity with its partners to better promote the smart retail.

Cao Haitao, an investor in the cultural industry, told NBD that the smart retail will be a new growth point for Tencent.

Email: tanyuhan@nbd.com.cn