BEIJING -- The profits of People.cn Co Ltd, the official website of the People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China, doubled year-on-year to 64.91 million yuan ($10.3 million) in the first half of 2012, new data has showed.

The website's sales revenue increased 38.1 percent to 267 million yuan, according to its semiannual reports posted on the website of the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

Earnings per share was 0.28 yuan, compared with 0.16 yuan in the same period a year ago.

The company attracted a great deal of market attention when it started trading on April 27, as it marked the first-ever listing of a state-owned media website. People.cn Co Ltd tried to go public in order to better compete with commercial websites such as Sina.com and Sohu.com.

According to the semiannual report, technology and mobile value-added services both posted 80-percent increases to 8.09 million yuan and 45.06 million yuan, respectively.

Wireless information services made a revenue of 84.35 million yuan, up 64.12 percent year-on-year. Advertisement sales hit 154 million yuan, up 18.35 percent.

The report attributed its profit surge to the company's improving presence, expanding business scale and increasing number of users.

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