On November 10, Tencent announced its unaudited comprehensive results for the third quarter of 2021. The unaudited consolidated results for the third quarter ended 30 September 2021 were announced today. The total revenue in the third quarter was 142.4 billion yuan ($22 billion), a year-on-year increase of 13%. According to non international financial reporting standards, the profit attributable to equity holders of the company during the period was 31.8 billion yuan (US $4.9 billion), a year-on-year decrease of 2%. After the release of the financial report, Ma Huateng, chairman of the board of directors and CEO of Tencent, and Liu Chi, President of Tencent, equally attended the teleconference to interpret the financial report and answer analysts' questions. The following is a summary of the QA part of the conference call. Question: what is Tencent's current market position in the field of metauniverse? What is Tencent going to do? Liu Chiping: meta universe is an exciting but vague concept. Looking at this field from a higher perspective, any technology that makes the virtual world more real or enriches the real world through virtual technology may become a part of the concept of meta universe. We believe that metauniverse can add new growth opportunities to the game and social network industries, and will also bring growth opportunities to the enterprise market. Tencent has relevant technologies and knowledge, which will become the basis for exploring and developing meta universe business in the future. For example, Tencent has accumulated a lot of experience in game business and social network. In terms of technology, we have engines, artificial intelligence, service architecture that can serve a large number of online users at the same time, as well as experience in digital content economy and digital assets in real life. In short, we have many paths in technology and ability to choose how to seize the opportunities in the meta universe. Question: the growth of wechat apps and e-commerce of wechat apps is very strong. Can you share some details? Liu Chiping: when it comes to wechat applets, both Gmv and advertising growth. In general, the message we give you is very healthy and strong. We may not share some specific data with you, but the overall trend is good. You can see that the number of active wechat small processes has increased by 40%, which also shows the prosperity of the whole ecology, which is one of the driving forces behind our growth. Question: can you share the specific strategy of wechat video number? How to attract more video creators and high-quality creators? What impact will the video number have on the whole Tencent ecosystem? Liu Chiping: we can see a very healthy growth of video number. We basically start from scratch, but at present, it is still very young. For a short video platform, it is still relatively small compared with the current leader in the industry. We continue to enrich the content, and we can see that many WeChat official account authors also add video numbers to share knowledge and content. Many of our video numbers are short videos based on knowledge, and there are other content fields. For example, during the Olympic Games, we can also see the linkage between the video number and Tencent sports. Many users watch the content about the Olympic Games on the video number. Now we can also see the continuous progress of the video number. The most important thing for us is to continue to do a good job in the content ecology and better integrate technology into the video number. Question: will the scale of investment in strategic areas be expanded in the future? What are the results of the current investment? James Michelle: we actively invest in the future, which is reflected in the growth of our staff and SGA. We will continue to invest. The results of our investment in enterprise services will be reflected in the income more slowly. In the game field, we will release new games every year, and 3a games may be launched in the future. In the past two years, we have expanded our major game studios to develop high-value games. In terms of short video, our bandwidth cost has increased rapidly this year. One of the reasons is the increase in short video viewing, especially video numbers. At present, we are still relatively restrained about the realization of video numbers. Question: with regard to talents, we have seen an increase in personnel this year, including some mergers. Now we see that the number of employees is increasing. What areas will need more employees and talents in the future? Lu: with regard to the growth of the number of people, in fact, fresh blood just graduated from university will be absorbed every year, and there will be new trainees every year. We need more talents in the key strategic areas we invest in. We have more growth in enterprise services and games. In terms of games, we also need to attract more talents to join the game development. In addition, we also invest more in content. In the past, many personnel in content were outsourced, but now we will establish our own team in this field to build better content and improve content quality. Personnel growth will slow down in 2022. (Xinhua News Agency)