TikTok parent company ByteDance has posted record pre-tax earnings of £31 billion ($40 billion), up 60 per cent year-on-year.

This makes the company the most profitable Chinese tech firm, outperforming its domestic rivals such as Tencent and Alibaba, despite the regulatory scrutiny it is facing in the West.

According to numbers first reported by Bloomberg, the company also grew its sales to £94 billion ($120 billion) from £63 billion ($80 billion).

However, as Bytedance is a foreign-owned company that is not yet traded on the stock market, it does not face the same level of regulatory oversight when it comes to posting earnings reports as publicly traded UK or US firms.

The company said that it intends to multiply the size of its e-commerce business by ten in the US market, according to Bloomberg’s sources. At the start of 2024, this goal was put at $17.5 billion.

The news comes as ByteDance faces several ongoing setbacks, including a ban of TikTok on UK government devices which was launched last month.

In March, the US House of Representatives also passed a bill that would force ByteDance to divest TikTok’s US operations from the company or be booted out of US app stores. The bill is still yet to be approved by Congress.

Additionally, the company announced the closure of LetsChat, a WhatsApp rival in Africa.

The South China Morning Post reported in March that ByteDance was laying off 1,000 of its workers in the Chinese Mainland.

The European Union is also stepping up its regulatory scrutiny towards the firm; last month it announced an investigation into TikTok which looked at whether the ByteDance-owned social media platform has violated the bloc’s child protection and transparent ad rules.

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