South African based ecommerce giant Naspers and its related European entity are to lay off 30% of their workforce. According to a statement released by Prosus, “We are adapting to a changing macro environment and have been working for some time to strengthen our cost structures.”
Prosus Chief Executive Officer Bob van Dijk said in an interview on Wednesday that the job cuts will take place over a 12 month-period and about 15 locations will be affected. Its largest corporate offices are in Johannesburg and Amsterdam.
“The reality is that the macro environment has become more difficult and has changed a lot. This also means that the cost of capital has changed a lot, as interest rates go up and risk premiums also go up,” he added.
As at March 2022, number of employees at Naspers/Prosus were around 30,000. So number of employees that would be affected in this layoff exercise would be about 9,000.
Prosus will also seek to cut costs at the more than 80 companies it has invested in, although those efforts have different timelines and scales, according to Van Dijk.
Naspers own three major entities – Prosus, Takealot and Media24 while Prosus owns or has investments in companies like OLX, Property24, Udemy, PayU, AutoTrader, DeliveryHero and more.
This is the latest in the layoffs that have been announced in the last couple of months. Microsoft is laying off 10,000 employees while Google is to lay off 12,000 people.
At the end of Wednesday, Naspers shares closed 1.7% lower in Johannesburg and Prosus declined 0.2% at 5:15 p.m. in Amsterdam
