Naspers to List Assets in Amsterdam

Yesterday, shortly before the market opened, Naspers announced that they intend to list their international internet assets in Amsterdam. You can read the announcement here - Naspers SENS. At one point in the morning, Naspers was higher by 1% while at the same time Tencent was down 3% in Hong Kong, effectively meaning that Naspers was up 4% on this news. At the close of the market though Naspers was down 1.6%. Tencent had closed down 3.1% so I would say that is a net gain.

Pulling out my trusty 'Naspers NAV' spreadsheet, it tells me that Naspers currently trades at a 37% discount just to their listed assets. Currently their Tencent stake is worth R1.88 trillion, their Delivery Hero stake is worth R22 billion, the Mail.ru stake is worth R21 billion and the Make My Trip stake is worth R8 billion. The Naspers market cap is only R1.4 trillion. The unlisted assets include OLX, Avito, letgo, PayU, iFood, Swiggy, Udemy and many others.

This is why Naspers wants to list their internet assets separately, in a bigger market. By listing in Amsterdam the hope is that international investors will put a smaller discount on the assets that Naspers owns. One of the restrictions that Naspers has in South Africa is that it is too big for our market, where they are around 25% of the index. Having said that, Naspers does have a presence in US markets through an ADS program, so they do already have a presence in international markets.

This listing will refocus investors on the internet assets in the Naspers portfolio. For some international investors, they might have been put off by the idea of owning a South African 'newspaper and TV' company which also has a stake in Tencent and other internet companies. Yesterday when Bob van Dijk was on Bloomberg, it was clear that there was a limited understanding of Naspers. NewCo will be a Dutch internet company now. Hopefully management will come up with a better name!