{"id":27506,"date":"2012-11-28T23:22:50","date_gmt":"2012-11-28T21:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=27506"},"modified":"2012-11-29T08:21:25","modified_gmt":"2012-11-29T06:21:25","slug":"naspers-no-faith-in-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/27506\/naspers-no-faith-in-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Naspers: no faith in Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

Naspers<\/a>, the South African media giant, says it will look to get rid of its remaining shares in social networking group Facebook<\/a> as soon as it can, having already sold\u00a0two-thirds for a book profit of\u00a0R1.5 billion through\u00a0Mail.ru<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Naspers says it does not own a direct stake in Facebook, but rather has in indirect investment through Russian Internet company, Mail.Ru, which owns the shares.<\/p>\n

In an interview with MoneyWeb, Naspers CEO, Koos Bekker<\/a>, did not shy away from the company’s stance that it is looking to shed the Facebok stake as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

“We ended up with a stake in Facebook [through Mail.Ru] when the company was listed – and the bankers are, of course, clever enough to limit you,” Bekker said.<\/p>\n

According to Bekker, Naspers was able to sell one third of its stake in Facebook when it listed – with a company value of $100 billion – which it did, gaining a maximum profit.<\/p>\n

“Then we sold one third recently, at about half that price – and then we still hold one third, which we\u2019re not allowed to sell until next year,” Bekker said.<\/p>\n

“So, regrettably, they stagger you – but we made a nice fat profit,” he said of the\u00a0R1.5 billion amount. And\u00a0despite not being a direct shareholder in the social network, Bekker cast doubt over Facebook’s true value, pointing out the company’s drop in market capitalisation since its IPO.<\/p>\n

“The interesting question is what is Facebook worth? It started at $100 billion, dropped to slightly below $50 billion but it\u2019s clearly a vigorous company so it may belt up,” Bekker said.<\/p>\n

“I think a lot of people cashed out. We were not a direct shareholder, but [rather] indirectly..quite a lot of the investors that came in late simply maxed the share price on the IPO – which is never a great idea, because you leave a lot of people dissatisfied – and I think several people lost money,”\u00a0Bekker added.<\/p>\n

More than one billion Facebook shares held by employees, insiders and early investors are set to become available for trading by year\u2019s end, according to a Reuters report.<\/p>\n

The largest batch of additional shares became eligible to trade on November 14, when the lock-up expired on roughly 800 million shares.<\/p>\n

Since its IPO, Facebook has faced a turbulent time in public trade, with the company’s stock price rising to an early high of $45.00, since dipping to a low of $17.55. The shares were listed at $38.00.<\/p>\n

Facebook shares are currently trading at $26.15 on the NASDAQ, giving the group a market cap of $56.6 billion.<\/p>\n

Naspers’ investments in a number of Internet companies include\u00a0Chinese\u00a0social media company, Tencent<\/a>, which upped it’s monthly active instant-messaging accounts to 784 million – with an increase of peak simultaneous online users to 167 million.<\/p>\n

Naspers, on Tuesday (27 November) reported \u00a0a 22% rise in revenue for the six months ended September 2012, to R22.6 billion, while overall managed internet businesses yielded trading profits of R3.1 billion.<\/p>\n

The company’s Internet revenue improved 70% to R14.1 billion.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/h3>\n

Naspers hikes Internet revenue by 70%<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Africa\u2019s rich list reveals 10 newcomers<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Naspers gains on Middle East rumours<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Naspers rallies to record levels<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Naspers shares gain 2.5% amid higher dividends<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Naspers boosted by Internet segment<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Naspers booked a ‘fat’ profit from the sale of two-thirds of its stake in Facebook, and has indicated that it will sell off the remaining shares as soon as it can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":20185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[45,26,155,2511,107],"class_list":["post-27506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-facebook","tag-headline","tag-ipo","tag-koos-bekker","tag-naspers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27506","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27506"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27534,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27506\/revisions\/27534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}