BEIJING, March 28 (TMTPOST)— More and more Chinese tech giants launched major buyback. Tencent Holdings Ltd disclosed it has launched repurchase of 838,000 Hong Kong shares for HK$357.8 to HK$371.6 apiece, totaling worth of HK$300 million on Monday.

Source: Visual China

Another Chinese internet giant Xiaomi unveiled to repurchase 3.448 million shares worth of HK$49.87 million the same day. The company said more than a week ago that its board formally resolved to repurchase shares in the Hong Kong open market from time to time at a maximum aggregate price of HK$10 billion. Hong Kong-listed shares of Tencent closed about 2.8% higher while Xiaomi shares up 0.42% that day.

Tencent’s move came after Alibaba’s announcement to upsize its share repurchase program by 60% to US$25 billion, making the size of the buyback program originally released in December, 2020 to the highest in the e-commerce giant’s history. And the action is set to shatter the buyback record for a Chinese firm listed outside the mainland China.

Last Wednesday, Tencent reported revenue of RMB144.19 billion (US$22.6 billion) in the fourth quarter of last year, missing the analysts’ consensus forecast of RMB145.3 billion, and  just had a year-over-year (YoY) increase of 8%, the first quarterly revenue growth less than 10%. The quarter saw Tencent’s net income rose 60% YoY to RMB95 billion, beating analysts’ estimate of RMB31.49 billion, but the gain mostly came from one-time proceeds of RMB78.2 billion from offloading its JD.com stock. The Non-IFRS profits fell more than the Wall Street expected to RMB24.88 billion with a 25% YoY decline, the second consecutive negative quarterly profit growth following the third quarter’s down 2%.  Tencent’s core business gaming also missed analysts’ expectation as revenue of the gaming and social media was RMB71.91 billion, compared with the RMB75.9 billion average forecast. The gaming revenue in domestic market just grew 1% YoY to RMB29.6 billion, as gains from the top grossing game Honor of Kings and the new launch League of Legends: Wild Rift were offset by slowdown of Moonlight Blade Mobile and Game for Peace. As one of a few bright points, if not only, Tencent’s revenue of fintech and business service surged 25% YoY to RMB47.96 billion, for the first time earning more than the gaming. On a conference call, Tencent’s management declined to confirm the speculation about the coming buyback like Alibaba's, instead focused on international gaming, cloud, WeChat messaging service and other core businesses.