The Naspers stable is gearing up to report a sharp increase in full-year earnings to end-March.
Headline earnings per share (HEPS), stripping out the effect of one-off financial events, is expected be 645-653 US cent for the period, compared with 143c previously, for continuing operations. This translates to an increase of up to 456.64%.
Core headline earnings, the group’s preferred profit measure, is expected to be 584c-619c, a rise of 107%-113.4% from the prior year.
The group, which recently appointed iFood boss Fabricio Bloisi as its new CEO, said these earnings figures were driven by “improved profitability of our e-commerce consolidated businesses and equity-accounted investments, in particular Tencent, and an increase in our net interest income”.
The group had set itself the ambitious target of showing a profit in its non-Tencent businesses in the period under review.
On Tuesday, the group said: “We are on track to fulfil our promises of consolidated e-commerce profitability and cash flow generation.”
It had restated some of the financial information published in the prior year to reflect OLX Autos’ classification as a discontinued operation and the removal of the unpopular and complex cross-holding structure.
As expected, the story is largely the same for its Amsterdam-listed subsidiary, Prosus. Core HEPS for Prosus is expected to rise 97% over the 99c recorded last year.
Naspers shares were little moved on Tuesday as the trading update came after market close. Its share price was down 0.63% at R3,820.91, while Prosus was 0.53% down for the day.
Bloisi is expected to take over the reins of the two companies on July 1. He was previously the CEO of Prosus’ Latin American food delivery business, iFood. He acquired iFood in 2013 when it was a 20-person start-up and has since grown it — rapidly and profitably — to become Brazil’s leading food delivery company.
Prosus took full control of iFood for €1.5bn (about R27.4bn at the time) in 2022.
“Fabricio is a proven entrepreneur and innovator with deep roots in operating, building and scaling world-class technology companies within growth markets,” the group said when it made the announcement in May.
In September 2023, Bob van Dijk was replaced by Ervin Tu, the group’s chief investment officer, on an interim basis.
Van Dijk had been at the helm of the technology investment group for almost 10 years, having been appointed as CEO of Naspers in April 2014, and becoming CEO of Prosus when it listed on Amsterdam’s Euronext in 2019.
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