After three straight years of decline, Chinese tech company Tencent is poised for gains in 2024. The stock is up more than 3% for the year so far, in contrast with a decline of more than 4% in Hong Kong’s main Hang Seng Index. Tencent, largely known for its gaming and social media businesses, is the biggest stock in the index with a market capitalization of more than $350 billion. The first quarter should “mark the trough” in Tencent’s games business, Morgan Stanley equity analyst Gary Yu and a team said in a report on April 14. “We expect games growth to be down 4% YoY (vs cons down 3% YoY) mainly due to soft domestic growth. That said, our previous expectation of 2Q seeing an inflection point remains intact.” The firm is overweight on Tencent shares, with a price target of 400 Hong Kong dollars ($51). That’s more than 30% above where the stock closed Friday. Chinese authorities resumed approvals of Tencent’s games in late 2022 after a freeze of more than a year. When asked in late March about the risk of new restrictions, management said that regulators have made it clear they intend to “provide a healthy environment for growing the industry rather than constraining the industry.” That’s according to a FactSet transcript of an earnings call. Most of Tencent’s gains this year have come after that quarterly earnings report. The company’s other major revenue generators include advertising, financial technology and business services. “Among our [Asia ex-Japan internet] stock coverage, Tencent is our top pick considering its diversified business models and margin expansion story,” Jefferies analysts said in a note on April 17 about their meetings in the last week with European investors. Also helping analysts’ optimism on the stock are Tencent’s share buybacks. Morgan Stanley’s Yu pointed out that Tencent has announced it would repurchase at least $13 billion in 2024 — more than double last year’s buyback program — for a yield of about 5%. The buybacks offset an ongoing sell-down by Prosus of its holdings in the Chinese company to fund its own share repurchase program. Prosus is a Netherlands-based company owned by Naspers, an early investor in Tencent. “Based on Prosus’ current run-rate of share sale in 1Q24, Tencent’s total buyback for 2024 will be around 2 times of Prosus’ share sale,” Charlene Liu, HSBC’s Head of Internet and Gaming Research, Asia Pacific, said in a report on April 16. “Tencent has increased its daily buyback to HKD1bn/day from HKD500m/day since mid-January,” the report said. HSBC has a buy rating on Tencent, with a target price of 385 Hong Kong dollars. The investment firm also expects Tencent’s game business to turn around soon, albeit not until the second half of this year. “While the inability to undertake buybacks during the blackout period [one month before earnings] can weigh on the share price near term, a persistent recovery in the games business and resilient growth from ads, fintech and business services can help to sustain earnings growth supported by improving margin,” the HSBC report said. Tencent is set to release first quarter results on May 14. Chinese internet companies Alibaba and JD.com have also announced share buyback programs this year. “I believe that we’re definitely seeing more mature performances or behavior patterns, if you will, especially for the list[ed] companies to do buybacks, to do dividends,” Grant Pan, CFO of China-based wealth management firm Noah Holdings, told me in an interview Friday. “In the past predominantly it’s a valuation-driven stock market,” he said. “But now I think people are really not just looking for the valuation but [the] actual value of the company. Instead of looking for multiples they’re looking for the earning power.” Pan said that low liquidity in Hong Kong has also affected share prices in that market, but he hopes that can improve with a new CEO. The Hong Kong exchange’s co-COO Bonnie Chan is set to become head of the business in late May. Noah’s clients have also started inquiring more over the last two to three quarters about investments in China, Pan said, noting that prices are nearing a level at which there may be opportunities to buy. — CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to reporters outside the West Wing after doing a television interview on the North Lawn of the White House on March 13, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday the sell-off in the stock market is due more to a sharp pullback in the biggest technology stocks instead of the protectionist policies coming from the Trump administration.
“I’m trying to be Secretary of Treasury, not a market commentator. What I would point out is that especially the Nasdaq peaked on DeepSeek day so that’s a Mag 7 problem, not a MAGA problem,” Bessent said on Bloomberg TV Wednesday evening.
Bessent was referring to Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, whose new language models sparked a rout in U.S. technology stocks in late January. The emergence of DeepSeek’s highly competitive and potentially much cheaper models stoked doubts about the billions that the big U.S. tech companies are spending on AI.
The so-called Magnificent 7 stocks — Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia — started selling off drastically, pulling the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite into correction territory. The tech-heavy benchmark is down about 13% from its record high reached on December 16.
However, the secretary downplayed the impact from President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs, which caught many investors off guard and fueled fears of a re-acceleration in inflation, slower economic growth and even a recession. Many investors have blamed the tariff rollout for driving the S&P 500 briefly into correction territory from its record reached in late February. Wall Street defines a correction as a drop of 10% from a recent high.
S&P 500, YTD
Trump signed an aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy at the White House Wednesday evening, slapping duties of at least 10% and even higher for some countries. The actions sparked a huge sell-off in the stock market overnight, with the S&P 500 futures declining nearly 4% and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average shedding 1,100 points. The losses will likely but the S&P 500 back into correction territory in Thursday’s session.
“It’s going to be fine if we put the best economic conditions in place,” Bessent said in a separate interview on Fox Wednesday evening. “If you go back and look, the stock market actually peaked on the [DeepSeek] Chinese AI announcement. So a lot of what we have seen has been just an idiosyncratic tech sell-off.”
A Newsmax booth broadcasts as attendees try out the guns on display at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention in Houston, Texas, U.S. May 29, 2022.
Callaghan O’hare | Reuters
Shares of conservative news channel Newsmax plunged more than 70% on Wednesday as its meteoric rise as a new public company proved to be short-lived.
The stock tumbled a whopping 72% in afternoon trading, following a 2,230% surge in Newsmax’s first two days of trading after debuting on the New York Stock Exchange. At one point, the rally gave the company a market capitalization of nearly $30 billion — surpassing the market cap of legacy media companies like Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp.
Newsmax was listed on the NYSE via a so-called Regulation A offering, instead of a traditional IPO. Such an offering allows small companies to raise capital without undergoing the full SEC registration process. The primary focus is to sell to retail investors, in this case It was sold to approximately 30,000 retail investors.
The public offering indeed garnered the attention from retail traders, some of whom touted the stock as the “New GME” in online chatrooms. GME refers to the meme stock GameStop, which made Wall Street history in 2021 by its speculative trading boom.
Newsmax has a small “float,” or shares available for trading. Less than 6% of Newsmax shares, or 7.5 million shares out of a total of 128 million fully diluted shares, are available for public trading.
The conservative TV news outlet has seen its ratings rise with the election of President Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans — although it still falls behind the dominant Fox News. Overall, Newsmax ranks in the top 20 among cable network average viewership in both prime time and daytime, Nielsen said.
Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading. Tesla – Shares jumped more than 5%. Politico , citing three Trump insiders, reported President Donald Trump told members of his inner circle that Tesla CEO Elon Musk could leave his current role in the coming weeks. Amazon – Shares of the e-commerce and cloud giant popped more than 2%. The New York Times , citing three people familiar, reported that Amazon has put in a bid to acquire TikTok. The video app is staring down an April 5 deadline to part with its Chinese owner or face a ban in the U.S. Rivian Automotive – Shares of the electric vehicle maker slid more than 5%. Rivian said that it delivered 8,640 vehicles for the first quarter , marking a 36% drop in deliveries compared to a year ago. However, that figure exceeded the consensus estimate of 8,200, per Visible Alpha. nCino – The cloud banking firm’s stock pulled back more than 20% after nCino reported weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings and soft guidance for the first quarter and full year. For the fourth quarter, nCino posted adjusted earnings of 12 cents per share, below the 19 cents per share that analysts polled by FactSet were expecting. The stock tumbled more than 30% in the premarket, which KBW said was ” overdone .” BlackBerry – The software and communications stock tumbled 6%. BlackBerry guided for fiscal first-quarter revenue of between $107 million to $115 million, lower than the $124.6 million analysts had expected, per FactSet. However, both BlackBerry’s fourth-quarter adjusted earnings and revenue exceeded consensus estimates. Newsmax – The stock sank more than 45%, giving up some of the big gains it reaped following its debut on the New York Stock Exchange Monday. The conservative cable news network surged 179% in the previous session and 700% on its first official trading day. Trump Media & Technology Group – Shares dropped 5% after Trump Media in a securities filing disclosed the possibility of a significant stock sale , including by insider shareholders such as the president’s trust. Petco – Shares of the pet goods retailer soared about 15% after CEO Joel Anderson purchased almost 1.6 million shares, according to a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. CoreWeave – The stock rose more than 8%, extending its recent gains. On Tuesday, shares of the Nvidia-backed cloud computing company climbed nearly 42% . The recent advances follow a rocky debut for CoreWeave late last week. Nvidia – The chipmaker added roughly 1% ahead of the April 2 tariff announcement. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently downplayed any negative impact from U.S. tariffs. The company’s chips are mostly made in Taiwan, but some of its systems are manufactured in other countries, such as Mexico and the U.S. Scotts Miracle-Gro – The lawn care stock jumped nearly 5% on the heels of Truist’s upgrade to buy from hold . Truist said the stock can benefit as economic uncertainty pushes consumers to shift spending from travel to the home. — CNBC’s Sarah Min, Alex Harring, Lisa Kailai Han and Michelle Fox contributed reporting.