China's Tencent posted a quarterly profit that halved from a year ago and recorded no revenue growth, its worst performance since it went public, and warned that advertisers in consumer, e-commerce and travel businesses have slashed spending.

Revenue totaled 135.5 billion yuan ($20.08 billion) in the quarter ended March, versus 135.3 billion yuan in the same quarter last year, and below an average estimate of 141 billion yuan from 16 analysts, according to Refinitiv.

Online advertising sales decreased  a worse than expected 18 percent year-on-year for the first quarter of 2022, "reflecting weak demand from advertiser categories including education, internet services and e-commerce," according to its financial report.

Tencent, operator of the WeChat messaging platform and the world's largest video game company, said profit attributable to equity holders of the company for the quarter fell 51 percent. It was the biggest profit decline since the company went public in 2004, according to Refinitiv data.

Tencent's market value has more than halved from its peak of HK$7.3 trillion ($930 billion) in February 2021 to about $451 billion now, but it remains the country's most valuable company.

The eight-month freeze on new game licenses also dealt a blow to Tencent, which makes much of its money by developing games such as "Honor of Kings" and "Call of Duty Mobile."

China resumed issuing licenses in April but the latest batch of new licenses did not include games from Tencent, and Beijing had yet to issue a new batch of game licenses this month.

The Shenzhen-based company's domestic game revenue dropped 1 percent in the first quarter while its international game revenue saw a 4 percent rise.

Tencent's Chairman and CEO Ma Huateng said the company will continue investing in strategic growth areas including enterprise software, Video Accounts and international games.

(With input from Reuters)