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Johannesburg - South African stocks rose marginally on Thursday as depressed resource companies dampened a rally by index heavyweight Naspers [JSE:NPN].
Naspers, an e-commerce company with global operations, gained as much as 6% touching a life high in line with a jump with Hong Kong-listed Tencent, in which it holds a majority stake. Naspers pared gains to close 2% higher.
"The market was fairly flat," said Chad Bushnell, a trader at Anglorand Asset Managers. "Naspers breaking out to new all time highs was on the back of the strong performance of Tencent."
Johannesburg's Top-40 index added 0.3% to 46 780 and the All-share rose by a similar margin to 52 985.
South Africa's mining production figures that beat market expectations failed to lift some commodity producers such as iron-ore companies, which melted as spot prices fell about 2%.
Kumba [JSE:KIO] was the worst performer among blue chips and dropped 2.5% while BHP Billiton [JSE:BIL] lost nearly 2%.
Mining output rose 7.5% in February year-on-year, compared to a contraction of 2.3% in the previous month. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected a drop of about 0.4%.
Activity was fairly muted with about 186 million shares traded, according to preliminary data. That compares with an average 183 million shares sold daily in 2014.
