(Yicai Global) Nov. 14 -- Shares of Tencent Holdings fell 2.3 percent after the Chinese media and gaming giant reported a worse-than-anticipated decline in third-quarter earnings.

The company's stock price [HKG:0700] closed today at HKD319.80 (USD40.86), recovering from an almost 2.9 percent drop earlier in the day.

Net profit attributable to shareholders fell 13 percent to CNY20.4 billion (USD2.91 billion) in the three months through September from a year earlier, Tencent said in an earnings statement yesterday. Analysts polled by Refinitiv expected CNY23.45 billion. Revenue jumped 21 percent to CNY97.2 billion, missing expectations for CNY98.2 billion.

It has not been an easy year for Shenzhen-based Tencent. Amid a slowing economy, advertisers have tightened their belts, while rivals, particularly TikTok owner ByteDance, have siphoned away more of the country's ad spending at the same time as the government has stiffened the regulation of content.

The company said its revenue gain came mainly from business payment and other fintech services, smartphone games, social networks and additional advertising services.

Tencent had steady and healthy growth in both operation and finance, founder and Chief Executive Pony Ma said in the earnings statement.

It earned CNY28.6 billion from online games in the third quarter, up 11 percent thanks to such popular offering as Arena of Valor, Pubg Mobile and Game for Peace, with the international market pitching in over 10 percent of its online games revenue in the period.

Tencent's cloud services logged CNY4.7 billion, up 80 percent, from growing use by existing customers and a swelling clientele in education, finance, lifestyle services and the retail sectors.

Monthly active users at home and abroad of its WeChat messaging and payment app totaled 1.2 billion in the third quarter, up 6.3 percent. The firm tallied 653.4 million monthly active users on smart terminals, down 6 percent. Its apps had 300 million daily active users, the company announced, releasing such data for the first time.

The fifth-generation wireless communications network is in its initial development stage, and WeChat's apps hold great future potential, senior managers noted at the firm's earnings call, saying 5G will bring ever more new application scenarios for applets.

Editor: Ben Armour