Naspers and Prosus CEO Fabricio Bloisi. (Supplied)
JSE-listed Naspers and its international arm Prosus are on track to deliver more than $7.3 billion – R126.44 billion – in revenue over the entire year, according to an interim results presentation this morning.
This would represent an increase of around 1.4% on the top line year-on-year based on the bottom end of its prediction, even as it sells down some assets.
The digital giant, under the Prosus banner, reported that it earned $3.6 billion in revenue during the six months to September, a gain of 14% year-on-year. Excluding its eMag units, its topline growth was 26% higher.
On a consolidated basis, Naspers reported revenue growth of $4.1 billion – or R19 billion – up 20%. Fabricio Bloisi, CEO of both companies, said during a media call that he was confident of meeting targets.
During the interim period, the listed companies sold entities worth $1.2 billion (R20.8 billion at this morning’s exchange rate of R17.32) as they consolidate holdings.
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Over the course of the year, Naspers and Prosus anticipate selling assets worth a combined $2 billion, or R35 billion, even as they continue to invest in ecosystems across geographic locations.
Bloisi says both Prosus and its South African parent company Naspers delivered “as promised”, with the results booklet stating they are “just getting started” as the “focus is on execution, execution, execution”.
The market reacted positively to the news, with Naspers’s JSE share price up almost 2.5% within an hour of the release of its results.
Having established a footprint in Europe, strengthened Latin American business, as well as reporting growth in India and China, Naspers and Prosus are now set to leverage cross-platform collaboration as they seek ongoing growth.
Bloisi says Naspers is driving “deeper engagement with customers and unlocking new revenue streams”, with $19 billion (R329 billion) in cash and cash equivalents on the balance sheet.
Nico Marais, CFO of both Prosus and Naspers, says that given current momentum, he is “confident that we’re on track” to meet full-year guidance.
Naspers is Prosus’s locally listed parent company, while Prosus is the listed Dutch subsidiary that houses almost all of the group’s global internet and e-commerce assets and investments – excluding the SA ones.
The JSE-listed tech company holds a more than 55% stake in Prosus, its international arm, which in turn owns a 24% shareholding in Chinese tech giant Tencent. In China, Tencent reported revenue 15% up year-on-year, with an operating profit gain of 18% over the same period.
Its results come as its operations in Latin America, which includes mobility, online classified, food delivery, and smart point-of-sale devices, was its leading geographic segment for the period.
Prosus also continues to experiment with new digital offerings in that region, the company stated.
Prosus e-commerce profit jumps 70% as ecosystem growth accelerates.
In India, Naspers is seeing an ecosystem that is “increasingly connected” and where results are improving, while it has moved into “execution mode” in Europe after building an ecosystem there, according to its results booklet.
Naspers branded its international assets as Prosus in 2019, mostly to address the international arm’s excessive weighting on its share value on the JSE. Prosus, Latin for ‘forward’, helped differentiate the global operations from Naspers’s South African-specific assets, which include businesses like Media24, Takealot and Mr D Food.
At the beginning of last month, Naspers sought to drive the valuation of its local businesses through a five-to-one share split. This was in addition to its share buyback programme. Shortly after the stock was divided, shares were trading at around R1 280.
They are now worth R1 191 each, having dropped 5.65% in the past month. Over five years, however, they have substantially outperformed the JSE’s ASLI with a gain of more than 88%.
The tech giant’s shares started trading at R17.50 when it first listed on the JSE in 1994, before increasing to R1 000, subsequently hitting R3 000 and later R5 000, ahead of reaching more than R6 000 ahead of the latest division.
Stock analysis web site MLQ.ai lists all Naspers share splits over time: July 2019, September 2019, September 2023, and the current October 2025 split.
Founded in 1915 by attorney William Angus Hofmeyr as De Nasionale Pers, the company aimed to promote Afrikaner nationalism, with its first major newspaper De Burger, later Die Burger.
It diversified in the 1980s with M-Net and later acquired Drum magazine, known for anti-apartheid investigative reporting. Naspers subsequently spun out its stake in M-Net owner MultiChoice, which now belongs to Canal+ as part of a $30 billion (almost R520 billion) deal.
