Tencent will not cut back on investments this year as investment remains the core strategy of the company, said Tencent President Martin Lau at an investor conference in Beijing on Wednesday.

The company has invested in over 700 companies in the past 11 years, 63 of those are listed companies, and 122 are unicorns valued at more than 1 billion U.S. dollars, Lau said in a speech. 

Last year, a record-high 16 companies Tencent invested in launched IPOs, Lau said.

The tech giant established the investment and merger department in 2008, focusing on investment in the consumer Internet and industry Internet fields.

The company's revenue in the third quarter of 2018 totaled 80.6 billion yuan (11.9 billion U.S. dollars), an increase of 24 percent year on year. Net profit rose 15 percent year on year to reach 19.7 billion yuan during the same period.