Photo/Cong Sen (NBD)

On May 14th, both Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group released their latest financial performance data.

Tencent Holdings announced that for the first quarter of 2024, the company's revenue increased by 6% year-over-year, reaching 159.5 billion yuan.

In the video sector, Tencent Holdings reported that Tencent Video released several popular self-produced TV dramas and animated series, such as “Blossoms Shanghai”, “Ice Hunt”, and “Perfect World”, which drove the number of long-video paid subscribers up by 8% to 116 million. Additionally, TME (Tencent Music Entertainment) strengthened its collaboration with Tencent Video by releasing the soundtrack of the popular series “The Legend of Shen Li”, which led to a 20% year-over-year increase in music paid subscribers, totaling 114 million.

After a year of transformation, Alibaba Group's multiple metrics exceeded expectations. According to the announcement, Alibaba Group's revenue for the first quarter of 2024 was 221.874 billion yuan, a 7% increase compared to the same period last year.

For the three months ending March 31, 2024, the revenue of Alibaba Digital Media and Entertainment Group was 4.945 billion yuan, a 1% decrease year-over-year; the adjusted EBITA was a loss of 884 million yuan, an improvement from the 1.129 billion yuan loss in the same period of 2023. The financial report indicated that the decline in revenue for Alibaba Digital Media and Entertainment was due to a slight decrease in Youku’s revenue; the reduction in losses was primarily due to the narrowing of Youku's losses.