Material value unlocked by a family trust as Naspers/Prosus shareholder 22 April 2023
~ Written by Phia van der Spuy ~
August 22nd, 2023
Naspers was founded in 1915 as Die Nasionale Pers. The company was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in 1998 and changed its name to Naspers. Over the years it held well-known brands and of course Tencent, one of China’s biggest technology companies (it acquired a 46.5% stake in 2001). Tencent was the goose that laid the golden eggs, as its market cap grew from R 5.3 billion to R 83.3 trillion. Prosus, now a global consumer internet group and one of the largest technology investors in the world, which was created in 1997 as a separate holding company of Naspers (holding 73% of the its shares), holding most of the Naspers investments, including that of Tencent, listed through a primary listing on Euronext Amsterdam and a secondary listing on the JSE in 2019. Although Naspers was one of the top-performing shares on the JSE over the last twenty years, with a compounded annual return of 32% (with Tencent as the main contributor), the discount to its top-performer Tencent grew. The group decided to start a share buy back programme. Shortly after this announcement, since June 2022, Naspers and Prosus directors and executives sold over R 5 billion in Naspers and Prosus shares.