Chinese tech giant ByteDance has recorded roughly 40 billion yuan (US$5.6 billion) in revenue for the first quarter of 2020, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.
The result represents a year-on-year growth of more than 130% for the company, one of the sources said.
Photo credit: ByteDance
According to the other person, the TikTok owner and operator has set a 2020 revenue target of around 200 billion yuan (US$28.2 billion), while the first source said it aims to reach revenues that’s around half of rival Tencent’s, which reported nearly 377 billion yuan (US$53.2 billion) last year.
Tech in Asia reached out to ByteDance but a spokesperson for the company declined to comment.
In May, Bloomberg reported that ByteDance had recorded a net profit of more than US$3 billion last year. The company had also generated over US$17 billion in revenue for full-year 2019, more than double the US$7.4 billion it raked in the year prior.
The spike was driven by a significant jump in user traffic that lured advertisers from Tencent and Baidu, the report mentioned.
Carrying that momentum into 2020, the company has started investing in a number of different verticals.
In January, it was reported that ByteDance built its own gaming division to take on market leader Tencent. Bloomberg said that the company had formed a team of more than 1,000 people, which includes the core developer team of NetEase-linked Pangu Game, to develop non-casual mobile games.
See also: ByteDance poaching Facebook, Google talent in Singapore push
In March, ByteDance had rolled out new features for its enterprise messaging app, Lark, to make it a closer rival to Google’s office collaboration tool G suite. The Economic Times recently reported that the company was also looking to set up another entity in India, which would focus on offering IT-enabled support and services to its global platforms.
Its most recent move is TikTok’s appointment of Kevin Mayer, Disney’s head of streaming, as its CEO to lead the app’s international expansion efforts. He will also be serving as ByteDance’s chief operating officer.
Editing by Charmaine de Lazo
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