Johannesburg - Media firm Naspers [JSE:NPN] said on Friday it will likely post up to a 20% increase in underlying profit, but gave no reason for the expected rise.
The company said in a statement it expects core headline profit for the six months to end-September to rise by 10% to 20% from 921 cents per share a year earlier.
Core headline profit, which Naspers says is its main earnings measure, excludes one-time items.
Earnings per share, which includes one-time items, will likely rise by as much as 120%, after Russian affiliate Mail.ru sold some of its Facebook shares.
The Cape Town-based company owns 29% in Mail.ru.
Naspers had said in June that heavy spending to drive organic growth would keep profit flat this year after it reported a 15% jump in profit for the year to the end of March.
Naspers has transformed itself from an apartheid-era newspaper publisher to a global multimedia business by buying or taking stakes in emerging-market Internet companies such as China's Tencent and Mail.ru.
* Fin24 is a Naspers publication