(Yicai) Jan. 22 -- Shares in Meitu surged as much as 7.4 percent today but ended the day down due to a tumbling benchmark index after the Chinese photo editing software developer said its net profit is likely to have more than tripled in 2023 thanks to the release of a series of artificial intelligence-driven products.

Meitu’s share price [HKG:1357] closed down 1.8 percent at HKD2.65 (USD0.34), while the Hang Seng Index slumped 2.7 percent. Earlier in the day the stock hit HKD2.90.

Meitu logged adjusted net profit between CNY330 million (USD45.9 million) and CNY370 million in the 12 months ended Dec. 31 last year, a gain of between 200 percent and 230 percent from the previous year, the Xiamen-based firm said yesterday.

Last year, Meitu launched a set of AI-driven products, including AI visual creation tools, AI video editing tools and AI digital human generation tools that creators can use for commercial photography and professional editing.

More people are buying Meitu’s image product mix thanks to generative AI, Meitu said. X-Design and Action, both of which target business clients, did better than expected. These editing suites have a high gross margin, boosting the company’s profit.

Meitu’s products are available in 195 countries and region around the world and the number of overseas subscribers has been soaring, driving up revenue, it said. The firm started out in 2008 as a photo retouch software and then expanded into livestreaming, short videos and smartphones.

In the first half last year, Meitu’s profit more than quadrupled from the year before to CNY151.3 million (USD21 million) while revenue jumped 30 percent to CNY1.3 billion (USD180.7 million), according to the company’s latest semi-annual report.

Meitu had 7.2 million paying members as of the end of June last year, which accounted for 2.9 percent of its monthly active users, a gain of 0.9 percentage point from a year ago.

Editor: Kim Taylor