Africa’s most valuable business is worth less than it owns
Fifteen years ago, a South African media company invested $34m in an obscure Chinese internet developer. Today that stake is worth $88bn. All Naspers, now Africa’s most valuable company, has to do is figure out how to make money from its other properties. The whole company is worth only $72bn, less than its stake in Shenzhen-based Tencent Holdings. Investors are not impressed with Naspers’s operations in pay-TV, newspapers and e-commerce in such countries as SA, Russia and India. To win them over, CEO Bob Van Dijk has launched an aggressive push to sell some assets, invest in others and expand operations such as classified advertising into new markets. If it pays off, comparisons with Tencent could become more flattering. The valuation gap was an "opportunity for long-term investors who have done their homework" on Naspers’s e-commerce components, said Ruan Stander, a money manager at Allan Gray, which owns Naspers shares. "The headline accounting numbers can mislead you into thinki...
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