Naspers 72% revenues are now earned offshore boosted by its investments in Tencent in China and Mail.ru Group in Russia, including Tencent’s deal with JD.com.
According to the group, revenues expanded 30% year on year (YoY) with its ecommerce and internet businesses growing ahead of pay-television and print. The group’s earnings grew 24% to R6,1bn, even though it spent R4,4bn in the continued development of the group’s ecommerce and pay-television platforms.
The group added that internet remained the fastest-growing segment and accounted for 58% of total group revenues and was boosted by accelerating revenue growth in many etail businesses.
”We are seeing meaningful increases in organic traffic in our markets as we deliver compelling customer propositions and scale our platforms,” said CEO Bob van Dijk. Organic growth resulted in Naspers’s ecommerce revenues increasing 43% YoY to R12,1bn. This segment reported a trading loss of R2,4bn after incurring development spend of R3,6bn.
Naspers has interests in classifieds in about 40 countries globally recently strengthened its position in this segment through an agreement with Schibsted to jointly develop select markets in Latin America and South East Asia, subject to EU approval. Competition remains aggressive, but the group has outgrown its competitors on the measures that matter most, particularly in mobile.
Naspers pay-television covers over 342 000 households in 50 countries on the African continent and the personal video recorder (PVR) base expanded to 1,2m subscribers and customers are now renting some 600 000 movies per month on BoxOffice, a service that will soon be expanded into sub-Saharan Africa.
