Emerging market media and internet giant Naspers hit a significant milestone this week when it reached a R1-trillion ($64-billion) valuation, matching that of its home country South Africa.
Naspers is Africa’s largest company by market valuation and the seventh largest Internet company in the world.
Founded in 1915, Naspers has transformed itself from its origins as a publisher of Afrikaans-language newspapers into arguably the continent’s most successful media and internet business. Having been granted a pay-TV licence in 1985 in South Africa, it expanded into satellite transmission in the early 1990s and adopted digital broadcasting when it was still in its infancy.
Its MultiChoice satellite subscription service is the continent’s dominant provider of television, through its subsidiaries DStv and SuperSport, and now has some 10-million satellite and digital subscribers.
It owned a share of MTN, one of South Africa’s first two cellular networks, but sold its stake, and several other businesses, and used this capital to invest in internet businesses around the world.
Its most notable investment was a 34% stake in Chinese messaging giant Tencent, which owns messaging apps WeChat and QQ. It also owns a small piece of Facebook.
Naspers chairman and former CEO Koos Bekker is a South African business legend, comparable in stature to a kind of Rupert Murdoch figure but infinitely more intelligent, with some of Steve Jobs’ visionary genius. Bekker has grown Naspers into the giant it is today.
His most significant investment, which accounts for the bulk of Naspers share value, was a 34% stake in Tencent, whose WeChat now has 800-million global users. The group also owns stakes in India’s largest online retailer (Flipkart) and Russia’s largest social networking site (Mail.ru).
“Naspers is probably one of the most formidable media companies in the developing world,” Arthur Goldstuck, managing director of researchers World Wide Worx, said.
“They have taken many outrageous bets and won big on many of those bets. They don’t always succeed, but when they do, they do it in spectacular fashion.”
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