{"id":233555,"date":"2018-03-23T16:20:38","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T14:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=233555"},"modified":"2018-03-23T16:20:38","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T14:20:38","slug":"naspers-says-it-may-list-other-business-units-on-the-stock-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/233555\/naspers-says-it-may-list-other-business-units-on-the-stock-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Naspers says it may list other business units on the stock market"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Naspers frustrated that investors give it no credit for its investments other than a stake in Chinese Internet behemoth Tencent Holdings Ltd, is considering listing some businesses on the stock market to highlight their value.<\/p>\n

Naspers raised $9.8 billion this week selling a slice of its Tencent shares, and plans to use the money to accelerate the growth and scale of its e-commerce businesses, which could potentially be listed.<\/p>\n

Even after the sale, the value of Naspers\u2019 Tencent investment, about $159 billion, dwarfs the South African company\u2019s market value of $121 billion. That means investors see no value in Naspers\u2019 payment services, food delivery and classifieds operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a priority for us to reduce the value gap,\u201d chief executive officer Bob Van Dijk said in a phone interview on Friday. \u201cOne of the things that we are actively discussing with our board is listing separate business units. The discount largely exists because of these structural market-driven reasons, so we are actively discussing this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem is one that many chief executives would dream of having: Under Koos Bekker, Van Dijk\u2019s predecessor as CEO, Naspers invested $32 million in Tencent, the operator of the WeChat messaging service, in 2001, and the stake has grown so much that it\u2019s come to dominate investors\u2019 perception of the company.<\/p>\n

Naspers owns 31.2% of the company after this week\u2019s share sale.<\/p>\n

Van Dijk is looking to close the discount by turning his other investments, such as the Romanian e-commerce platform eMAG, profitable. Naspers has invested as much as $10 billion in its online businesses at a return rate of 23%, excluding Tencent, he said.<\/p>\n

\u2018More Profitable\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe return has given us the confidence that we can build even larger and more profitable e-commerce companies, and the sale of shares was done to get funds to deliver on that strategy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The publisher of South African newspapers and operator of pay-TV services has spent in excess of $2 billion over 12 months on acquisitions and organic growth, the CEO said, with the food-delivery business consuming $1 billion.<\/p>\n

Naspers invests in sectors that it has a grasp on and where it experiences good returns, according to Van Dijk.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see further opportunity in these sectors,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Solutions to the valuation gap with Tencent have to be structural and long-term, Van Dijk said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to implement short-term decisions that will deliver a reduction of the gap, but is actually not the right decision for the company going forward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Buying back shares is a consideration once the company starts producing excess cash. \u201cAt the moment we are consuming cash and we don\u2019t think this is the right time to buy back our own shares,\u201d said Van Dijk.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Naspers to reduce its stake in Tencent<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Naspers frustrated that investors give it no credit for its investments other than a stake in Chinese Internet behemoth Tencent Holdings Ltd, is considering listing some businesses on the stock market to highlight their value.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":213869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[26,107,1977],"class_list":["post-233555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-headline","tag-naspers","tag-tencent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233555"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":233561,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233555\/revisions\/233561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}