ByteDance raked in a record underlying profit last year, overtaking China’s long-reigning tech giants Tencent and Alibaba for the first time even as losses mounted for its fast-growing TikTok business unit. The world’s most valuable private company posted a 79 per cent surge in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, its preferred metric for profitability, to about $25bn in 2022, up from about $14bn the year earlier, according to two investors briefed on the numbers.
ByteDance’s profit came on the back of almost $85bn in sales in 2022, up more than 30 per cent from a year earlier, as advertisers increased spending on the fast-growing TikTok viral video platform and its sister Chinese app Douyin.
This rise has helped ByteDance, which was valued at $300bn last year, surpass China’s listed tech giants, Tencent and ecommerce group Alibaba, which reported ebitda of $23.9bn and $22.5bn for 2022, respectively. Both groups have been hit hard by Beijing’s two-year regulatory crackdown on the country’s tech giants.