Naspers: Ceiling after ceiling
In the old economy, back in the days when dark satanic mills made actual stuff, business was reasonably predictable. You’d sweat your workers a little harder, squeeze the costs, grab a little more market share and you’d be looking to bump your bottom line up by 10% or 20%/year until you retired with the gold watch to the furthest corner of the golf club bar. In the brave new world that Naspers has embraced, however, all bets are off and there is practically no limit to the company’s ambition. The conservative end of the punterocracy has been raising eyebrows about Naspers for years, muttering that it’s too expensive, too frothy, too risky, that they don’t understand the business model and don’t like China, and so forth, as the share price has flicked them a disinterested finger and gone through ceiling after ceiling. It’s been an astonishing ride, and the company still has plenty of appetite left to keep the journey going. Tencent remains the jew...
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