Internet and media giant Naspers has smashed the R1 000/share barrier in early morning trade on Friday, propelled higher by weakness in the rand — the currency has tumbled to four-year lows this week — and insatiable investor interest in China’s Tencent, in which it owns a one-third stake.
Tencent, which owns the popular QQ and WeChat instant messaging services, was this week named as China’s most valuable listed technology brand by advertising company WPP and research firm Millward Brown.
The surge in Naspers’s share price, which touched a new record high of R1 012,77 shortly after the market opened on Friday, comes in spite of the group warning late last month that it was expecting a big increase in development spending in the second half of its current financial year.
Announcing its interim results for the six months ended 30 September 2013, Naspers said it planned to focus on developed classifieds websites and building digital terrestrial television networks in Africa through its MultiChoice subsidiary.
This will have a “dampening effect” on earnings and cash flow in the second half and for the 2014 financial year as a whole, it said.
Already in the first half of the 2014 financial year, development spend has risen by 87% to R3bn, leading to a 15% decline in consolidated operating profits compared to the same period last year.
“We are building e-commerce platforms, in particular online classifieds, [and] rolling out digital terrestrial television across many cities in Africa. The pace of investment in these opportunities will accelerate sharply in the second half of the current financial year,” Naspers said.
“We expect development spend to exceed R7bn for the full financial year to March 2014, compared to R4,3bn last year.”
In the six months to September, Naspers grew its top line by 28% to R28,8bn, driven by strong growth in its Internet businesses, including its associate, China’s Tencent, and helped by weakness in the value of the rand. Core headline earnings per share grew by 16%. “We caution, though, that over the next six months an acceleration of investment into growth areas will lower earnings.”
Both Tencent and Russia’s Mail.ru reported solid growth, contributing R4,4bn and R405m respectively to core headline earnings.
Naspers now earns the majority of its revenues, including associates, offshore instead of in South Africa, and from the Internet businesses instead of from pay-television business MultiChoice.
The surge in its share price — it’s risen by 80% in the past 12 months — has propelled its market capitalisation to R420bn. — (c) 2013 NewsCentral Media
