The world's largest video game company reported income of around $21.5 billion for the fourth quarter...

Lower than analyst expectations.

Tencent's core gaming business endured a slowdown during the period.

Gaming revenue in China declined 3% - while international gaming revenue rose only 1%.

Tencent's president Martin Lau said the slowdown was due to more passionate gamers having already spent on their games in the first quarter last year...

That was when China moved to lift all global health crisis restrictions.

As a result, Lau said the company's gaming revenue in the first quarter this year will also be soft.

However he added Tencent has a pipeline of new games to boost its domestic revenue.

The company, which also operates messaging platform WeChat, said it aims to at least double the size of its share repurchases

It wants to raise that from just over $6 billion last year, to more than $12.7 billion in 2024.