Johannesburg - Naspers, Africa’s biggest company by market value, is
seeking partnerships with mobile-phone operators on the continent to boost its
video-on-demand business and help compete with US giant Netflix.
The owner of Africa’s biggest pay-TV provider is planning to build on a
joint venture agreed last year with Kenya’s largest company, Safaricom, to
roll out online service Showmax at more affordable data prices. Safaricom is 40
percent owned by Newbury, England-based Vodafone Group.
“We will be targeting the whole of sub-Saharan Africa for mobile
partnerships,’’ Naspers CEO Bob Van Dijk said on Wednesday at the annual
meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Working together
with telcos will be a big part of what we do. We are live in Kenya and there
are several others” that we are targeting, he said.
While the Cape Town-based company’s satellite pay-TV business has long
dominated the sub-Saharan African market, it was hurt last year by falling
currencies against the dollar and new competitors such as Netflix
and Econet Wireless Global of Zimbabwe. Naspers is seeking to maintain its
market-leading position with online products like Showmax, which offers movies
and TV shows such as Game of Thrones and Vikings.
“There’s not a lot of cable on the continent and never will be,” Van Dijk
said. “The video-on-demand business will have to be a mobile play through
affordable data.”
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Naspers has evolved from a South African newspaper publisher into a global
investor in technology companies, with its most successful venture to date
being an early-stage investment in the Chinese creator of WeChat, Tencent
Holdings. The shares have increased 8.6 percent this month, valuing the company
at R960 billion ($71 billion).
The company posted a 31 percent rise in its first-half profit as strength
of its e-commerce businesses and stake in Tencent outweighed slumping earnings
at the pay-TV service. So-called headline earnings were $914 million in the six
months through September.
Naspers plans to harness artificial intelligence to enable growth across
its businesses, said Van Dijk. Other Naspers companies include Indian travel
operator Ibibo and Russian social media provider Mail.ru Group.
“We want to get people on board and build our AI capacity internally
rather than investing in an AI business,” he said. “We want to bring in the
skills. We plan to push this very hard.’’