Kingsoft Corp, which floated shares for the first time in Hong Kong last month, posted a 20-percent growth in net profit in the second quarter, thanks to the booming online game and anti-virus software business, the Beijing-based firm said yesterday.

 

The firm earned 37.75 million yuan (US$5.03 million), a 19-percent growth year on year. Its revenue swelled 85 percent year on year to reach 139.5 million yuan in the period ending June 30.

 

It was the first time Kingsoft has released its fiscal earnings after it started trading on October 9 in Hong Kong.

 

Shares of Kingsoft fell 3.18 percent to HK$4.87 (58 US cents) yesterday compared with a 3.19-percent drop in the Hang Seng Index.

 

"Kingsoft's high growth rate comes from the double profit engines - online games and software," Lei Jun, Kingsoft's president, said in a statement.

 

Kingsoft's game business, which contributed two-thirds of its total revenue, hit 101.67 million yuan and every paid user spent 28 yuan on Kingsoft games on average in the second quarter, double from a year ago.

 

Kingsoft also sold virtual items in online games and overseas markets such as Vietnam, the company said.

 

"Kingsoft will focus more on the profitable game business as it has to face shareholders' pressure (to gain more profit)," said iResearch, a Shanghai-based Internet consulting firm, in a recent note.

 

Kingsoft, which develops the WPS document processing suite to compete with Microsoft's Office software in China, gained revenue of 36.51 million yuan from the software business, without providing a profit figure.

 

The growth in the software business mainly came from the anti-virus segment as 5.3 million people bought Kingsoft's Duba products in the second quarter, a whopping 366-percent growth from a year ago.

 

(Shanghai Daily November 9, 2007)