Chris Spillane
NASPERS is rewriting the “Bric” acronym to include Nigeria and Turkey among the world’s best emerging markets as China and Russia lose some lustre with Africa’s most valuable company.
“India features high both in our development spend and our merger and acquisition spend, as well as Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil and Turkey,” the media company’s chief executive Bob van Dijk said yesterday.
“Those are markets that are very rapidly growing, particularly the online internet population and we believe that provides opportunity.”
Naspers boosted development spending by about 33 percent to R10.7 billion as it continues expanding its TV and online retail businesses in the year to March, Van Dijk said.
Scouring the globe
Adjusted net income rose by 30 percent to R11.2bn on growth from Tencent Holdings and online retail, according to its full-year results on Monday.
The Cape Town-based company is scouring the globe for its next internet bet as consumers shift to smart devices from computers.
Naspers owns 34 percent of Chinese internet operator Tencent, has online-service interests in about 40 countries and is Africa’s biggest seller of pay TV. “We’ll invest significantly in e-commerce, because we want to further grow our leadership there and we’ll also continue investment in digital terrestrial TV,” Van Dijk said.
“If we see new models that are very encouraging we’ll put investment behind those.”
Revenue growth was driven by the investments in Tencent and Russian internet company Mail.ru, while sales from its online retail unit rose 36 percent to R27.8bn.
Mail.ru, which is 29 percent-owned by Naspers, has fallen more than 40 percent since the start of the Ukraine crisis.
Naspers added 727 000 satellite TV users, giving almost 8 million subscribers access to English Premier League soccer and dramas such as Game of Thrones.
The company is producing more African content and more than doubled its digital terrestrial TV users to 2.2 million as African governments switch off analogue signals.
“We are increasing our investment in local content,” Van Dijk said. “There are several global players that definitely have ambition in every single continent, also in ours. What we’re trying to do is build the best local proposition.”
Naspers shares were up 2.99 percent to R1 895 at the close in Johannesburg yesterday, boosting the year’s gain to 24.7 percent and valuing the company at R795.7bn. – Bloomberg