China's Tencent Q2 profit up 85 pct, beats view

SHANGHAI Aug 12 (Reuters) - Tencent Holdings (0700.HK), operator of China's largest instant messaging platform, said on Wednesday that its quarterly net profit rose 85 percent, beating analysts' expectations, on strong growth in its Internet services.

Tencent, which also operates popular online games, said its second-quarter net profit came in at 1.19 billion yuan ($174 million) versus 644 million yuan in the same period a year earlier.

A poll of three analysts by Reuters Estimates expected net profit to come in at 984.7 million yuan.

The growth largely was due to an increase in the number of fee-paying customers for the firm's Internet value-added services. (Reporting by Melanie Lee; Editing by Chris Lewis)