Tencent Holdings Ltd.
Company Background
Tencent Holdings is a Chinese Internet services giant based in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province. It is the biggest rival of Alibaba Group, the country's largest e-commerce company. Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are commonly known collectively as BAT in China.
Tencent was established in 1998. With the hit of its social network service QQ, users of its smartphone chat app WeChat surged, reaching 549 million at the end of March 2015. WeChat is gaining popularity with young Chinese.
As its revenue mainly comes from PC and smartphone games as well as advertising, increasing QQ and WeChat users is likely to lead to higher earnings.
Ma Huateng, founder and CEO of Tencent, is a young entrepreneur from Shantou, the coastal eastern part of Guangdong Province, where many competent overseas Chinese have their roots. He is also a major shareholder of Tencent, owning some 10% of the company.