The Brazilian running the most valuable company in South Africa

Fabricio Bloisi is the new CEO of Naspers and Prosus and has a big task ahead of him.

Bloisi joined the Naspers board as an executive director on 1 July and will join the Prosus board following the AGM in August 2024, subject to shareholder approval.

He left his role as CEO of iFood, wholly owned by Prosus, to take over at the parent company following Bob van Dijk’s abrupt departure.

He acquired iFood in 2013 when it was a 20-person start-up, and it has since grown to become Latin America’s leading food delivery company.

He has a degree in Computer Science from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and an MBA from the Getulio Vargas Foundation.

Thus, the Brazilian entrepreneur is taking over one of the most valuable companies in the world. Naspers alone has a market cap of R618 billion.

Although several companies on the JSE have higher market caps than Naspers, many of them are secondary listings and have little to no operations in South Africa.

Moreover, dutch-based Prosus, of which Naspers is the parent, has a market cap of 80 billion euros (R1.5 trillion.)

Combined, Naspers and Prosus are only bettered by BHP Group Limited (market cap of R2.5 trillion), which exited the South African market a decade ago and almost took Anglo American’s assets with it.

When looking at companies with primary listings in South Africa, Naspers is clearly on top.

Naspers was founded in 1915 and became the largest publishing company in South Africa.

Although it still has interests in media (it wholly owns Media24), it has transitioned to become a multinational technology company.

In South Africa, it is most notably the owner of Takealot, South Africa’s biggest eCommerce player.

It also owned Mr D Food, Superbalist, AutoTrader and Property24.

Despite being a major player in South Africa, Naspers’s value is derived mainly from its stake in Chinese technology firm Tencent, the biggest video game company in the world and owner of WeChat.

Naspers bought a 46.5% stake in Tencent in 2001 for $32 million.

Naspers listed its global interest investment business unit Prosus, including its reduced roughly 30% stake in Tencent on Euronext Amsterdam, in 2019.

Naspers is the majority owner of Prosus, while Prosus owns 49% of Naspers as per their cross-ownership structure.

What next

Bloisi’s takeover comes amid a mixed performance for the group’s South African entities.

In its latest results for the financial year ended 31 March 2024, Takealot registered another massive trading loss of R253 million for the year, even if this was an improvement from the R400 million loss recorded the year prior.

Naspers said that the normalised consumer behaviour post-pandemic and a challenging economic environment, characterised by elevated interest rates and high inflation, was throughout the year.

“Temu and Shein have made inroads in the South African market, and the recent arrival of Amazon will intensify competition further,” said Naspers.

Mr D, on the other hand, became profitable for the first time, with a trading profit of US$3 million (R55 million) for the financial year.

AutoTrader also saw an 11% rise in user traffic, while Property 24 remained the market leader.

Nasper’s global portfolio showed some sign of positivity, with its E-commerce profile becoming profitable for the first time, jumping by US$460m (R8.3 billion) to US$24m (R43 million).

The group’s consolidated trading losses were also reduced from US$640 million (R11.5 billion) in FY23, underlining its accelerating profitability path.

Core headline earnings, the group’s measure of after-tax operating performance, were also up 88% to US$2.1 billion (R38 billion).

Headline earnings per ordinary share also jumped from 119 US cents (R21.53) to 759 US cents (R137.34).

Following the increase, the board of Prosus recommended that its shareholders receive a gross distribution of 10 euro cents (R1.94) per ordinary share N.

In the announcement of his appointment, Bloisi said that identifying new technologies, such as AI, is a priority for the group.

“I believe we are in an amazing moment where technology disruption can change the life of billions of people for the better. A company like Prosus must play an important role in identifying new technologies, such as AI, that impact the world and specifically emerging markets,” he said.

“Our focus on innovation and discipline, combined with our outstanding people, knowledge, and culture, is a recipe for better experiences for our customers, opportunities for employees and better results for our shareholders long into the future.”

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