Earlier in the week Naspers/Prosus released results for the full year ending 31 March 2024. We have over 200 JSE clients who own Naspers, many of whom have large gains on the position.
Naspers/Prosus is an investment holding company. Its largest asset is still the stake in Tencent but they do have a lot of other assets, mostly in the online retail space. We covered Tencent recently so we will look at the rest of business a little more closely.
The numbers looked decent. The new CEO, Fabricio Bloisi, seems to be focusing on cost-cutting and making the existing businesses profitable. Ecommerce was profitable for the first time ever, pulling in $38 million from $5.5 billion in sales. Revenues from continuing operations (which excludes Tencent) was up 11%. Classifieds (up 36%) and food delivery (up 22%) had particularly good years. The image below looks at each sector, the associated brands and the trading profit improvements - which is clearly a new priority for management.
All-in-all the rest of the business seems to be in decent shape despite the valuations of those businesses coming down heavily in recent years thanks to interest rate increases.
Naspers/Prosus will probably sell more Tencent shares in order to raise funds for fresh investments and/or to buy back shares. Thanks to these share buybacks and a growth in profits, headline earnings per share for Naspers were up 110%. We still think there is a lot of value to be unlocked here. If you own the shares, keep them.