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Naspers propels JSE

Johannesburg - Naspers [JSE:NPN] was again the centre of attention on the JSE on Wednesday morning, when the share price rose sharply on the news of strong quarterly results from Tencent, the Chinese internet giant of which Naspers owns 34%.

Naspers gained more than 5% after Tencent Holdings, China's biggest listed tech firm, said its first-quarter net income climbed 60%, surging beyond analyst estimates, helped by a strong performance in its mobile gaming business.

Naspers initially moved sideways while the market was waiting for the results, but immediately after the news the share price jumped more than 3%. By midday, it was trading 5.75% higher on R1 140.00. It was only last week that the share price temporarily dipped  below the R1 000-level.

The result is that the two major indices on the JSE are both on their way to new intra-day highs. By midday, the All share index was 0.59% higher on 49 459 points and the Top 40-index was 0.56% higher on 44 331 points.

All the major indices was higher with the Industrial index, pushed higher by Naspers, the star performer with an increase of 0.78% to 55 922 points.

Tencent said its net income for the quarter ended March grew to 6.46bn yuan ($1.04bn) from 4.04bn yuan a year earlier, far above analyst estimates of 4.93bn yuan.

Revenue leapt 36% to 18.4bn yuan ($2.95bn). The division that includes the lucrative gaming business saw a 35% jump in revenue, boosted by success in sales of games for smart phones distributed over hugely popular mobile messaging app WeChat.

Global monthly active users of Tencent's WeChat, China's biggest mobile device application, rose 11.5% from the previous quarter to 396 million.

This good news was not yet discounted by the market in Hong Kong where Tencent is listed, as the results was only announced after the Hong Kong market closed.

Naspers might well have another run tomorrow if investors in Asia reacted favourably to the surprisingly good news.

On Wednesday, Tencent’s share price ended a choppy session up 0.8% after swinging between a 1.4% gain and a 1.7% loss within the first hour and a half of trade.

Amongst the other shares in the spotlight Altron [JSE:ATN] announced a jump of 44% in headline earnings for the first half of the year, after its income rose by 16% from R1.1bn to R1.3bn. The share price responded positively and was at midday 0.04% higher on R24.86.

Datatec [JSE:DTC] fell back with 58% to R52.71 after announcing a drop of 23% in headline earnings per share for the first six months, despite income growing by 4%.

Tsogo Sun [JSE:TSH] and Grand Parade Investments [JSE:GPL], which are both trading at 52-week highs, strengthened further this morning. The two companies announced a restructuring of its casino interest, which means that Grand Parade will sell its interest of 25.1% in the SunWest casino in Worcester in the Western Cape to Tsogo Sun for R1.55bn.

GPI traded another 3.65% higher this morning on R6.24, while Tsogo Sun improved 0.69% to R29.07.

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