SINGAPORE - China's Tencent just became the first Asian company to crack the illustrious US$500 billion club.
The shares of the Hong Kong-listed Internet giant, known for its WeChat messaging app and online games, closed at HK$420 (S$73.01) on Monday (Nov 20), bringing its market value to HK$3.99 trillion (US$510.7 billion or S$693.59 billion).
Tencent is now more valuable than Facebook, according to AFP and CNBC. Top of the pole is Apple, with pundits predicting the iPhone maker could be the first to break the US$1 trillion mark in the months ahead.
Tencent's market cap is also now exceeds e-commerce giant Mr Jack Ma's Alibaba Group Holding at US$474.15 billion with Baidu far behind at US$82.97 billion.
It brings the personal wealth of Tencent founder and chief executive Ma Huateng - also known as Pony Ma and no relation - close to US$47 billion.
Tencent's stock has shot up 121.4 per cent this year and is up 11,251 per cent since the company went public in 2004 at at HK$3.70 a share.
Analysts say it can go further.
"Some of this year's best performers are worth holding as long-term bulls," said Mr Wang Menghai, a Shanghai-based money manager at Fullgoal Fund Management Co told Bloomberg. "It would be a wrong decision to sell it just for some short-term gain."
CNBC credits Tencent's meteoric rise to its continued revenue growth, massive user base and investments into new areas. Last week, the Chinese company reported a 69 per cent year-on-year rise in net profit for the third quarter to 18 billion yuan, beating market forecasts.
It's WeChat, China's most popular messaging service, has close to one billion users.
Online and mobile games, another big revenue stream, brought in over US$4 billion in sales last quarter. Its fantasy role-playing game Honour of Kings, which is based on Chinese historical characters, is so popular that Tencent had to introduce curbs on play time earlier this year after reports of children being seriously addicted to it. The game will debut in the United States next year.
Tencent also acquired a majority stake in Finnish smartphone maker Supercell, the company behind the popular "Clash of Clans" mobile game.
Other fast-growing parts of the business include digital content such as video, as well as online advertising, said CNBC.
Tencent president Martin Lau said in last week's earnings call that its Youtube equivalent, Tencent Video, has become the video streaming service with the largest paying subscriber base in China, at 43 million subscriptions.
Over the past year, several of Tencent's subsidiaries have also made stellar debuts on stock exchanges in Hong Kong and the US, most recently its online publishing platform China Literature, which nearly doubled in price on its first trading day earlier this month.
Their genuine prowess aside, the Financial Times points out that the rise of China's tech giants has been greatly aided by Beijing's ban on the US titans - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google. There is nothing to rival WeChat and while Amazon was let in, it was quickly quashed by Alibaba's Tmall and Taobao e-commerce sites.
