Fabrisio Bloisi, the new Naspers Group and Prosus CEO, has moved swiftly to reassure the market that the group’s existing strategy will remain in place as questions were raised regarding future mergers and acquisitions, as well as capital allocation.
Bloisi’s appointment came as a surprise, with the share prices of Naspers and its global internet investment subsidiary Prosus closing slightly down on Friday on the news that the CEO of Brazilian food delivery company iFood, which he acquired in 2013 and was later bought by Prosus, would be taking over.
In a conference call with analysts, Bloisi said the company would continue to drive up the profitability of the e-commerce businesses, pursue its share buyback programme and also maintain discipline on capital allocation. “The key priorities of the company remain unchanged. Broadly, I am happy with the strategy of the company. We have amazing assets inside Prosus that can keep growing profitably.”
He emphasised Prosus’s focus on generative artificial intelligence (AI). Generative AI includes applications that can generate text, images, audio and data in response to prompts and have in recent months transformed the way users generate new content.
“We are in a moment of profound change. Many companies are going to lose space to innovative companies using technology and AI to change how the world works. I see that as a big opportunity,” he said.
Described as a vibrant entrepreneur with a strong track record in building technology startup companies, Bloisi started Movile, an investment company that over the years invested in up to 20 companies. Some have since been sold.
Movile acquired iFood in 2013 when it was in its infancy, employing only 20 people. Under Bloisi’s leadership, iFood has grown to more than 5,000 employees and 350,000 partner restaurants, works with 300,000 delivery partner couriers and serves more than 96-million orders per month. iFood directly and indirectly moved U$20bn (about R363m) in gross production value, amounting to 0.53% of Brazil's GDP in 2022.
Sasfin’s Alec Abraham said with Bloisi being an operator and startup entrepreneur, the implication is that the focus may shift more to the operating excellence of the group’s assets rather than new asset allocation and investments. “The latter is an area that [chief investment officer] Ervin Tu acknowledged has been wanting in the recent past. Ervin will continue with a broader CIO role, but he did reiterate that they will be more judicious on new investments.”
Bloisi beat 60 candidates from around the world to the role of Naspers/Prosus CEO. He becomes Naspers’s fourth CEO in 40 years. His appointment came as a surprise as the market was expecting the job to go to Tu, who had been steering the ship for about eight months.
Naspers and Prosus chair Koos Bekker said some of the key requirements that the board looked for was a strong background in engineering and entrepreneurship.
“We did a study on what we regard as our peers and found that about 55% of the CEOs or founders have an engineering background ... and another odd 20% actually learnt the skill by starting their own companies young. So they employed one or three and learnt from the ground up. Those two fields, either formal engineering academic background or alternatively a very early immersion in building stuff, proved quite vital.”
Bekker said “the technological switches are too huge ... We need to transform our company for the new world and that’s what we’re hoping Fabricio will help us in”.
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