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By Xie Fang

Six months after its unconventional return to the A-share market, 360 Security Technology, China's largest cybersecurity service provider, released its audited semi-annual financial report late Tuesday, showing a steady profit growth over the first half of 2018.

The company generated a total of 6.02 billion yuan in operating revenue during the reporting period, a year-on-year increase of 13.95 percent. Its net profit also grew by 8.95 percent from a year earlier to reach over 1.53 billion yuan by the end of June.

The company's profitability has improved over the period as its basic earnings per share rose by 4.55 percent year-on-year to 0.23 yuan, while its weighted average rate of return on equity lost 3.87 percentage points to 8.55 percent.

As China's leading cybersecurity service provider, the company intercepted as many as 39.65 billion cyberattacks for its users nationwide during the reporting period, a year-on-year increase of up to 25.6 percent, which also means 220 million cyberattack interceptions per day.

In addition, the company identified or intercepted 19.46 billion nuisance phone calls as well as 4.87 billion spam messages over the first half of this year.

When it comes to its revenue sources, the company's online advertising service remained its biggest revenue generator by bringing in over 4.75 billion for the company during the same period, a year-on-year surge of 24.16 percent.

However, due to the lackluster performance of its online game business, the overall revenue generated by its value-added services plunged by 27.35 percent from a year before.

Nonetheless, with a market penetration rate of up to 96.54 percent and 512 million average monthly users, the company maintained its status as the top player in China's cybersecurity software market.

The company invested a total of 1.1 billion yuan in the development of new cybersecurity technologies during the reporting period.