Dit is van eind november 2020
Naspers/Prosus
Finally, European technology investor Prosus (OTC:PROSY), and its majority-owner, South African media firm Naspers (OTC:NPSNY), have each done pretty well in 2020. However, their performances could be seen as relative disappointments. After all, about 90% of both companies' value is tied up in a massive 31% share of Chinese tech giant Tencent (OTC:TCEHY). While both Tencent-owners have outperformed the broader market in 2020, they actually lagged Tencent's performance, which soared 58.6% in 2020:
Currently, Prosus trades at a substantial discount to the value of its Tencent ownership alone, despite also owning about $30 billion worth of other international internet businesses in food delivery, online classifieds, digital payments, and education tech.
However, management is taking new steps toward closing the discount. Prosus announced a $5 billion share repurchase last month, which it should be executing as we speak. However, March of 2021 will mark the three-year anniversary of its prior sale of some Tencent shares back in 2018. At the time, Naspers said it wouldn't sell any more Tencent shares for three years.
It's not clear that Naspers intends to cash in more of its Tencent stake when the three years is up. Yet given that Prosus trades at roughly a 30% discount and Naspers trades at a 50% discount to Tencent, management may choose to cash in more of its massive Tencent stake and engage in more financial engineering.
Even if that doesn't happen, however, Naspers/Prosus management has promised more actions to close the yawning discount going forward. CEO Bob Van Dijk said on the recent conference call, "what I want everyone to take back from this is we're working as hard on [closing the discount] as we are on the business. It's important to us. It's important for our shareholders and we want to make progress. And when we're ready, we'll come back and say that's where this is."
Naspers spun off Prosus in late 2019 and announced its buyback in 2020. Shareholders could look forward to at least one and perhaps more financial engineering actions next year, which will hopefully further close the discount to its prized asset.