South Africa’s Naspers internet group said it has sold 2 percent of its stake in Tencent, raising about $14.5bn and reducing its holdings in China’s most valuable company for just the second time in two decades.
In 2018, Naspers sold 2 per cent of Tencent for the first time, raising $10bn. A year later, Naspers listed the stake and other international internet investments as Prosus, retaining 73 per cent, in order to reduce the valuation mismatch further.
Prosus, the Dutch-listed international arm of Naspers that holds the Tencent stake, said that cash from the sale will “increase its financial flexibility to invest in growth” in an emerging-market internet empire that extends across Indian online payments, South American food delivery, and Russian social media.
The offering to institutional investors, made just after a three-year lock-up expired on a first sale of shares in 2018, is “understood and supported by Tencent”, said Prosus, which pledged to avoid selling for another three years.
The sale will reduce Prosus’s stake to just under 29 percent, a stake that keeps it as the biggest shareholder in the Chinese gaming and social media giant.
Johannesburg-listed Naspers has rarely cashed in on the $32m investment that it made in a then little-known Chinese start-up in 2001 under its former chief executive, Koos Bekker, which is now worth nearly $240bn.
“Through the sale of this small portion, Prosus intends to fund continued growth in our core business lines and emerging sectors, as well as allow for complementary acquisitions,” Bekker, now chair of Naspers and Prosus, said.
The latest Tencent shares up for sale by Prosus are worth about the same as the enterprise value of Just Eat Takeaway.
Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have been appointed as joint book-runners to manage the transaction.
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