Tencent Becomes China's Most Valuable Company

China's technology giant Tencent has become the country's most valuable enterprise, Bloomberg reported Monday, beating state-owned telecom behemoth China Mobile and nearly reaching half of Apple's valuation.

Tencent stocks surged 4.16 percent at closing on Monday on the Hong Kong stock exchange, to HKD 210.20, giving it a market capitalisation of HKD 1.99 trillion ($256.60 billion or roughly Rs. 17,07,636 crores), according to its company website.

The figure beat China Mobile's market capitalisation of HKD 1.97 trillion as of Monday and put the technology giant as China's most valuable company, Bloomberg News reported.

It also put the Hong Kong-listed firm amongst the world's 10 largest public companies including the likes of Apple, the report said. Apple was valued at $580.50 billion (roughly Rs. 38,62,812 crores) based on its latest stocks quote.

Tencent's share price has jumped nearly nine percent since August 17, when it reported a net profit surge of 47 percent in the three months to June, to CNY 10.74 billion.

Based in the Chinese southern export hub of Shenzhen, Tencent operates China's biggest messaging service WeChat, through which a variety of businesses including gaming, advertising and social networking have flourished in recent years.

It agreed to buy Finnish game-maker Supercell Oy, creator of "Clash of Clans", from Japanese mobile firm SoftBank for $8.6 billion in June.