South African media and Internet firm Naspers posted an expected 20 percent jump in annual profit on Tuesday, boosted by strong performance in its Internet businesses and a weaker rand currency.<\/p>\n
The company, which has stakes in Internet firms such as China’s Tencent and Russia’s Mail.ru, said core headline earnings per share increased to 2,216 cents from 1,850 cents last year.<\/p>\n
Naspers had said earnings for the year to end-March would rise by as much as 25 percent.<\/p>\n
The company considers core headline earnings, which exclude some one-time items, as its main measure of profit.<\/p>\n
Naspers’ revenue grew 27 percent to 50.25 billion rand ($5 billion) and it declared a 385 cents per share dividend, from 335 cents last year.<\/p>\n
Naspers has been spending heavily on acquisitions of e-commerce companies, particularly in eastern Europe. Naspers said it paid 1.8 billion rand in cash for a 79 percent stake in Netretail, an online retailer with operations in Czech Republic and Poland.<\/p>\n
The company, which started out as an Afrikaans newspaper publisher nearly a century ago, said it was cutting costs in its print media operations in Brazil.<\/p>\n
Its shares have gained 25 percent so far this year, compared to a 2.8 percent decline by the Top-40 index.<\/p>\n
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