Naspers gets shareholders nod to list Prosus on Euronext Amsterdam

Shareholders of South African based Internet giant, Naspers, have approved the listing of Prosus, a new global consumer internet group, on Euronext Amsterdam on the 11th of September 2019.

As a global consumer internet group and one of the largest technology investors in the world, Prosus is likely to be Europe’s largest listed consumer internet company by asset value. It will comprise all of Naspers’ internet interests outside of South Africa including its companies and investments in the online classifieds, payments and fintech, food delivery, etail, travel, education, and social and internet platforms sectors, among others. This will include Naspers’ 31% ($125 billion) stake in Chinese internet giant, Tencent Holdings.

The Prosus Group’s businesses and investments serve more than 1.5 billion people in 89 markets, and are the market leaders in 77 of those markets.

These assets are some of the world’s leading and fastest-growing internet brands, such as Tencent, mail.ru, OLX, Avito, letgo, PayU, iFood, Swiggy, DeliveryHero, Udemy, eMAG, and MakeMyTrip. Prosus will be a strategic investor and operator focusing on long-term value creation by building leading technology companies that improve people’s daily lives in high-growth markets.

Naspers will list Prosus on Euronext Amsterdam on Wednesday, 11 September 2019, along with a secondary, inward listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Naspers expects to own no less than 73% of Prosus with a free float of up to 27% created through a capitalisation issue of Prosus shares to Naspers shareholders. Naspers will retain its primary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

The Prosus Group’s businesses and investments are organised around the following segments: Ecommerce (which comprises its interests in Classifieds, Payments and Fintech, Food Delivery, Etail, Travel and other Ecommerce (including Ventures)), Social and Internet Platforms (which comprises its interests in Tencent and Mail.ru Group) and Corporate (relating to its group-level corporate services and treasury function).

Prosus was incorporated as a private limited liability company under the laws of the Netherlands on 3 April 1997 and converted to a public limited liability company on the 16th of May 2019.

According to Media24, a Naspers subsidiary, Naspers has two main reasons for pushing ahead with the spinoff:

• First, the media, technology and internet company has outgrown its listing on Johannesburg’s stock exchange, where it makes up about 25% of the main index. That’s forced many South African shareholders to sell down the stock due to restrictions on their funds’ exposure to a single company. A new listing on Euronext is expected to attract new investors, particularly in Europe, while easing Naspers’s dominance of the JSE.
• The second reason is that Naspers is valued at a discount to its stake in Tencent – $98bn vs $125bn at current levels. Separating assets into different entities may help investors revalue different parts of the company’s portfolio and ultimately narrow the valuation gap. To that end, Naspers also spun off its pan-African pay-TV service, MultiChoice, earlier this year.

Naspers’s Prosus deal “should help to decrease the discount to the see-through value of its Tencent stake,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst John Davies.