China's 424 key State-owned enterprises (SOEs) posted a combined profit of 452.75 billion yuan in the first five months of the year, up 36.2 percent year-on-year, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said.

Power, auto, machinery and metallurgy firms posted a combined profit of 414.13 billion yuan, accounting for 91.5 percent of the total, the commission said in a statement.

Core business revenue of the 424 SOEs rose 20.4 percent year-on-year to 4.73 trillion yuan in the five months to May, it said.

The construction materials, metallurgy, chemicals, coal, non-ferrous metals posted the strongest sales growth of over 29 percent, the commission added.