Online businesses helped spur on a 24% year-on-year revenue growth at Internet and media giant Naspers.
In its interim results announcement on Friday, Naspers reported that its revenue measured on an economic interest base topped R74,3bn for the six months ended September 2015.
Meanwhile, the company also said that its core headline earnings increased by 45% year on year to R8,8bn with its stake in Chinese Internet giant Tencent and South African video-entertainment businesses being the main contributors. Naspers owns a 34% stake in Tencent.
Breaking down its numbers further, Naspers reported that its Internet segment delivered revenues of R47,7bn, an increase of 33% year-on-year. Meanwhile, this segment’s trading profit was R10,2bn — a 57% year-on-year increase owing to Tencent’s performance.
The company indicated that its e-commerce segment grew revenue by 26% during the period to R15,3bn, while the company’s classifieds segment experienced revenue growth of 36% year on year.
Naspers’s video entertainment segment reported a year-on-year increase of 12% in revenues to R22,6bn. However, the company’s trading profit in this segment was constant at R5bn compared to the previous year owing to the group’s investment in video streaming service ShowMax, weakening economies and currencies and “sizeable foreign input costs in sub-Saharan Africa”, the company said.
The company further said that its total customer base for video entertainment stood at 10,2m for the period.
Finally, Naspers said that it is experiencing “headwinds” in its traditional offline print and media business Media24, but that it is “addressing costs”. The company recorded revenues of R4bn in this segment.
In terms of Media24, Naspers said that reduced costs resulted in a trading profit of R202m, but that development spend to build online initiatives was at R142m. — Fin24