{"id":623811,"date":"2022-09-08T09:39:29","date_gmt":"2022-09-08T07:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=623811"},"modified":"2022-09-08T09:39:29","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T07:39:29","slug":"speculation-over-naspers-owned-prosus-stake-in-tencent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/623811\/speculation-over-naspers-owned-prosus-stake-in-tencent\/","title":{"rendered":"Speculation over Naspers-owned Prosus stake in Tencent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tencent Holdings shares worth $7.6 billion appearing in Hong Kong\u2019s clearing and settlement system has fueled speculation that a large stakeholder may be selling its holdings.<\/p>\n

About 192 million of additional shares, representing about 2% stake in the Chinese tech giant, were registered on the platform as of Wednesday, according to city\u2019s exchange website. While there are several reasons for a stake to appear, such a move is typically seen as a precursor to selling and investors pointed to its most dominant backer Prosus NV as the likely culprit.<\/p>\n

The Dutch e-commerce firm owns a 29% stake in Tencent after its parent, Naspers Ltd, became an early investor more than two decades ago. In late June, Prosus said it planned to reduce its stake to fund a buyback program, adding pressure to the Chinese online game company\u2019s stock.<\/p>\n

Shares slid as much as 2.8% on Thursday, taking their loss from a June high to more than 20%.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are worried that the big holder will keep selling their stake and there is no timetable when their sale will end,\u201d said Steven Leung, executive director at Uob Kay Hian (Hong Kong). \u201cThis kind of changes in the clearing system will always trigger worries that more selling will happen in near future.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Several global investors have trimmed their holdings in major Chinese firms in recent months, fanning concern of more selling to hit the market. That includes Warren Buffett\u2019s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. paring back its stake in BYD Co., the nation\u2019s biggest electric maker.<\/p>\n

SoftBank Group Corp also has plans to sell its holdings in Alibaba Group Holding.<\/p>\n

Naspers didn\u2019t immediately respond to a Bloomberg email seeking comment. A spokesperson for Tencent declined to comment.<\/p>\n

The stake reduction is likely the next setback for a company that\u2019s seen multiple blows following Beijing\u2019s broad regulatory crackdown and China\u2019s slowing economic growth. Faced with declining revenue, Tencent has been looking to ease investor worry by cutting costs as well as selling off its own assets, which include online retailer JD.com Inc and Singapore\u2019s Sea Ltd.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s also been buying back shares in the open market recently on a near daily basis, even though that\u2019s not helped cushion broader market angst.<\/p>\n

According to the company\u2019s latest filing, Prosus sold over 3.9 million of its shares in the six months through June, trimming holdings to about 2.765 billion shares. Since the Dutch firm announced its stake reduction plan in late June, Tencent has repurchased about 25.8 million shares in total, based on Bloomberg calculations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be an overhang for Tencent for sure but given it\u2019s not a block sale, should not be too negative,\u201d said Justin Tang, head of Asian research at United First Partners. \u201cShares dropped in the past few days partly due to more Naspers selling, but also due to macro concerns. Plus the crackdown on the tech sector of course.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Read: Naspers reports strong digital growth \u2013 announces share repurchase programme<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tencent Holdings shares worth $7.6 billion appearing in Hong Kong\u2019s clearing and settlement system has fueled speculation that a large stakeholder may be selling its holdings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":410639,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[6312,26,107,2947],"class_list":["post-623811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-alibaba-group","tag-headline","tag-naspers","tag-tencent-holdings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623811","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=623811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":623817,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623811\/revisions\/623817"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}