ByteDance Surges to $5.64 Billion Revenue in Q1

TikTok owner ByteDance announced revenue of 40 billion yuan ($5.64 billion) in the first quarter of 2020, up 130 percent from the previous year, Reuters reported Wednesday.

A source familiar with its earnings told Reuters that ByteDance has a revenue goal of 200 billion yuan for 2020, more than half the revenue of its rival Tencent, which reported 377 billion yuan in 2019.

ByteDance’s revenue mainly comes from advertising on its portfolio of apps, which include Douyin, the domestic version of TikTok, and Toutiao, China’s leading news and information content platform. ByteDance is reportedly competing for digital advertisements. Previously, China’s Internet advertising market was dominated by Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent.

ByteDance’s apps soared in usage at the peak of the pandemic as people were required to stay home and practice social distancing.

Douyin and TikTok ranked first among worldwide non-game mobile application downloads, with as many as 112 million downloads in May, double its previous year, according to the mobile application data analysis company Sensor Tower.

Douyin and TikTok earned more than $95.7 million in the global App Store and Google Play in May, up 10.6 times from May 2019.

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Reuters reported that ByteDance is valued at $95 billion to $140 billion in the private equity secondary market.

ByteDance declined to comment.