Naspers’s European-listed Internet investment holding company Prosus announced on Friday that it plans to acquire up to $5-billion in both Naspers and Prosus shares in a massive share buyback programme.
A Naspers shareholders’ meeting is, appropriately enough, more like the annual gathering of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress.
It would be interesting to speculate how many people who, after reading the Prosus and Naspers results for the year to March, are thinking the same thing: would Warren Buffett invest in either company?
Bob van Dijk, CEO of Naspers and its European-listed spin-off Prosus, received remuneration of US$15.98-million, or R276-million, in the past year, according to the Naspers annual report published on Tuesday.
Media and e-commerce group Naspers on Monday reported a 4.5% drop in profit for the year to 31 March, mainly as a result of investments to drive growth in its food delivery business.
Naspers unlocked about R150-billion of value for shareholders through the separate listing of its Internet businesses, and with that done is now focusing on bulking up in online food deliveries.
Prosus may be a bit late with its offer to buy Just Eat: Takeaway.com and Just Eat announced their proposed transaction at the beginning of August and have already published a schedule of events to finalise it.
The astonishing things is that shareholders were asked to approve the new scheme – and did – without knowing what the performance condition was.
Naspers has received enough votes from shareholders to proceed with an Amsterdam listing of assets including a R1.9-trillion stake in Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings.
Bob van Dijk received almost R1.9-billion in salary, incentives, and vested share options and shares appreciation rights in the year to March 2019, a regulatory filing published on Friday shows.