South Africa’s biggest company scores big win

Naspers and Prosus group chief executive officer Fabricio Bloisi says the group has overshot its e-commerce earnings target for 2025, with promises of more to come.

Bloisi provided a voluntary business update to shareholders on Thursday (8 May) following the close of the group’s 2025 financial year, and ahead of its results presentation in June.

He said that Prosus continued to grow revenue and profitability in the year and is on a path to becoming the number one lifestyle e-commerce brand in Europe, India and Latin America.

Importantly, he said that the group managed to beat an earnings target set in the early days of his time as leader of the company.

Bloisi was announced as Naspers’ new CEO in May 2024. He joined the Naspers board as an executive director on 1 July and the Prosus board following the AGM in August 2024.

Naspers is South Africa’s biggest company by market cap, currently sitting with a valuation of $44.57 billion.

It owns a majority stake in Prosus—the group containing Naspers’ international e-commerce assets—which Bloisi also heads.

In a letter to shareholders in October 2024, Bloisi reflected on his first 100 days at Naspers, promising to drive the company to continued success, and vowing not to slow down its growth path.

Notably, he promised to keep the group’s adjusted earnings betore interest and tax (AEBIT), at bare minimum, in line.

“In fiscal year 2024, the group improved its e-commerce Adjusted EBIT by more than $400 million,” he said.

“Our intent is to keep that pace up this year (2025) and deliver $400 million in Adjusted EBIT from our e-commerce operations.”

On Thursday, the chief executive said that the group not only fulfilled this promise, but exceeded it, saying the group will report over $435 million for the 2025 finanical year.

He said this will continue into the next financial year.

“For FY 2026, I want to achieve at least the same level of incremental AEBIT,” he said.

“This is important because we should be measuring our results not by the millions, but by many, many billions and we will get there.”

In addition to the improved adjusted earnings, the CEO said that the group also hit other notable milestones in the year.

These include a 50% boosts in adjusted earnings for classifieds group OLX to $270 million and iFood doubling (100%) its earnings to more than $200 million;

He said the group has also invested $8.6 billion in India, where it is seeing a good return with even more opportunity for growth, particularly with ride hailing.

The group has also acquired two companies to boost its operations in Latin America and Europe: online travel agency Despegar and European food delivery group JustEatTakeaway.

“These businesses are profitable leaders in their industries and we are very confident we can help them accelerate growth and profitability further to create substantial value, Bloisi said.

The CEO said that more information on the group’s prospects and plans for the year ahead will be given after it publishes its full results.

The group will present its full-year results in June.