Johannesburg - Naspers [JSE: NPN] shares rose after Africa’s largest company said it expects to report core earnings growth for the just-ended fiscal year, bolstered by the sale of a stake in Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings.
The South African media and investment company raised $9.8bn (about R116bn) in March by selling a 2% stake in Tencent. The shares rose 0.8% to R3 379 by 15:40.
Naspers has said it would use the money from the sale of Tencent shares to invest in its classifieds, online food delivery and financial technology businesses and make other investments.
It plans to release earnings around June 22 for the year ended March 31.
Growth also will be boosted because the company changed the way it calculates core headline earnings, Naspers said in a statement Wednesday.
In March Fin24 reported that Naspers would sell 190 million
of its Tencent shares to accelerate and scale its e-commerce business. The sale
reduced Naspers' stake in Tencent from 33.2% to 31.2%.
At the time CEO Bob van Dijk told Fin24 that the group was “excited” about the returns from the ecommerce businesses.
Besides its stake in Tencent, which operates the WeChat messaging service, Naspers owns newspapers, operates pay-television services and has investments in a range of internet companies.
The share price was trading up 1.23% at R3 393 by 17:07.
* Fin24's parent company Media24 is part of the Naspers Group. Naspers owns a stake in Tencent.
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