Tencent had a good 2014, pulled in $12.9 billion in revenues

Tencent, China’s gaming and social media giant, just published its Q4 2014 earnings report. Aside from 500 million monthly active users on WeChat, there’s a lot of data to take in.

Here are the highlights for 2014 as a whole:

• Tencent’s 2014 revenues hit RMB 78.9 billion (US$12.9 billion), up 31 percent from 2013’s total.
• Profits reached RMB 23.9 billion (US$3.9 billion), up 53 percent year-on-year.
• Net margin increased to 30 percent from 26 percent in 2013.

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Here’s what happened in specific areas of Tencent in Q4:

• Online gaming revenues – including smartphone games linked to WeChat and QQ – grew to a RMB 11.96 billion (US$1.92 billion) in Q4, up 41 percent from Q4 2013.
• That includes PC gaming on titles like CrossFire. Tencent says that even PC gaming revenues went up.
• Revenue from Tencent’s online value-added services hit RMB 17.14 billion (US$2.76 billion) in Q4, up 44 percent from the same period a year ago.
• Social network revenues grew by 50 percent to RMB 5.17 billion (US$832.1 million).

The main downside was Tencent’s ecommerce revenues, which continued to plummet after the company’s March 2014 online retailing shake-up that saw it take a major stake in Alibaba rival JD and hand over much of the ecommerce operations to JD.

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Tencent’s report today hailed its growing array of partnerships (which it secures with major investments) with the likes of JD, Dianping, and Didi Dache as a way for the tech titan to “free up our internal resources to focus on the core strengths of our platforms.” It adds that it enables the firm to “continue to benefit financially from the growth potential of the underlying industries via our significant equity stakes in partners.”

Those partners have also been used to bolster WeChat, the company’s most important app, as it evolves from a simple social network into a hub for ecommerce and online services. Shortly after Tencent invested in taxi-hailing app Didi Dache, the service was embedded into WeChat.

Tencent’s full Q4 report is here (PDF link).