NetEase Grew Online Games Revenues by 62% in 2016 to RMB28 Billion

BEIJING, Feb. 16, 2017 /CNW/ -- NetEase, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTES), one of China's leading Internet and online game services providers, announced its unaudited financial results for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016.

Net revenues for 2016 were RMB38.2 billion (US$5.5 billion), up 67.4% from the previous year. Gross profit for 2016 was RMB21.7 billion (US$3.1 billion), up 61.6% from the previous year. Net revenues from online games were RMB28.0 billion (US$4.0 billion), up 61.6% from the previous year.

The Company's other businesses also grew significantly. Net revenues from advertising services were RMB2.2 billion (US$310.0 million) for 2016, up 20.3% year-over-year. Net revenues from e-mail, e-commerce and others were RMB8.0 billion (US$1.2 billion) for 2016, up 117.5% year-over-year.

In 2016, the Company launched 40 new mobile games, with many of them performing well at home and abroad. Specifically, Onmyoji was named one of the top 10 outstanding games in 2016 in China's iOS app store, and was ranked by Facebook as "Top 3 Best Mobile Game in 2016" worldwide. To leverage this game's early success, NetEase released Onmyoji in Southeast Asia in December 2016, with plans to roll out this game in Japan, Canada, Europe and the United States later this year.

"We achieved strong growth across our business in 2016 as we continued to introduce premium game content to entertain and inspire our community," said Mr. William Ding, Chief Executive Officer and Director of NetEase. "There remains massive opportunity within the mobile market, and we will continue to build our formidable and diverse pipeline. Currently, our mobile portfolio has more than 100 games, and we plan to add additional mobile versions of our legacy titles and new self-developed and licensed mobile games to further this momentum."

NetEase also developed its first VR title Twilight Pioneers for Daydream, Google's VR platform. The game quickly topped the Google VR games download rank, and won the "Experts' Choice Award" at the Asia VR/AR Summit. 

In addition, other NetEase mobile games such as Tianxia III mobile, Great Voyage, Demon Seals mobile, Heroes of Tang Dynasty mobile, as well as HIT, the new licensed ARPG, all achieved good results.

In addition to new games, NetEase's flagship games also continued to perform well. According to App Annie, Fantasy Westward Journey topped the global iOS mobile game sales ranking in June 2016. This was the first time a Chinese company achieved this.

Thanks to its robust game pipeline and the cooperation with leading game companies worldwide such as Blizzard Entertainment and Mojang AB, NetEase achieved another year of excellent operational and financial results, winning the top developer award on App Store and Google Play. According to App Annie, in October 2016, NetEase was the highest grossing developer on both the App Store and Google Play worldwide.

"In 2016, we brought best-in-class products and services to our community. As we move through 2017 we will look toward the future, designing products and services that address fluid market dynamics, enabling continued growth and value creation," Mr. Ding concluded.

SOURCE NetEase Games

Sharon Hu, [phone], [email protected]