Internet the only way forward for cash-flush Naspers
Exit from MultiChoice part of transformation into global tech giant
When Naspers gets rid of pay-TV business MultiChoice, the Cape Town-based group will become a pure-play internet company comparable to a mash-up between Dutch e-commerce website Booking.com and Japan's SoftBank. Naspers started out as publisher of Dutch-language newspaper De Burger more than a century ago, but thanks to its 2001 bet on China's Tencent - funded largely by subscriptions to its pay-TV operations - the group has morphed into one of the world's largest internet companies. Save for its relatively inconsequential Media24 business, which still publishes some newspapers and magazines, the online transition will be all but complete when Naspers unbundles MultiChoice onto the JSE in early 2019. "It's an important step and it makes the Naspers story simpler - now we're a consumer internet company, period," CEO Bob van Dijk tells Business Times. For years, Naspers has relied on MultiChoice's steady flow of dividends to lift its e-commerce businesses, such as OLX Group, off the g...
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