Will Naspers’s Euronext gambit work?
The treatment Naspers has chosen for its huge headache has analysts’ approval – but some observers are not so sure
If you were to look at the scoreboard, it seems that investors in Naspers* seem to think the technology company’s gambit of listing its overseas assets in Amsterdam is the way for it to uncork billions in value. Since it announced its plan to list all its overseas assets (most particularly its Chinese wunderkind Tencent, but also other internet businesses, like classified operation OLX) on Amsterdam’s Euronext three weeks ago, Naspers stock has risen almost 11% on the JSE. The company will own 75% of this new Amsterdam firm, imaginatively named NewCo for now. This is the most elegant solution Naspers’s brains trust could see for a migraine induced by its entirely unforeseeable success. This is all because, back in 2001, Naspers invested $32m for nearly half of Tencent — then a loss-making Chinese internet company run by an entrepreneur called Pony Ma — that could have gone either way. But its messaging platforms QQ and WeChat took off, providing capital to allow Tencent to invest in...
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