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Naspers CEO Bets Dutch Listing Will Fix Tencent Stake Discount

Move is part of plan to cut gap with value of Tencent holding.

Naspers CEO Bets Dutch Listing Will Fix Tencent Stake Discount
Bob Van Dijk, chief executive officer of Naspers Ltd. (Photographer: Halden Krog/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Naspers Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Bob van Dijk has been working for years to solve a problem rivals might envy – getting investors to value his South African firm nearer to its $133 billion stake in Tencent Holdings Ltd. A plan for a Dutch listing is his boldest step yet.

By carving out its international internet businesses, including the 31 percent holding in the Chinese tech giant, for a listing on Euronext Amsterdam, van Dijk hopes to tap a bigger pool of capital and shrink a discount that’s been worsened by Naspers’ outsize presence on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

“This will be the largest consumer internet business,” in Europe and the third-largest company on the Amsterdam exchange, van Dijk said in a phone interview, noting that he expects to attract 2 billion euros ($2.26 billion) of investment just from index funds. The value of the Naspers offspring would likely trail only Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Unilever NV on the Dutch market.

Read more: Naspers offspring to be instant star of Amsterdam market

The move makes sense, and might narrow the gap between Naspers’ 1.42 trillion rand ($100 billion) market capitalization and the Tencent stake, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst John Davies. But the bigger challenge for van Dijk will be to show that the firm can strike gold with more of its investments.

“The transfer doesn’t indicate whether Naspers can demonstrate a track record of investment success” after the transaction, Davies said in a note.

Naspers might have remained a little-known publisher of newspapers and operator of pay-TV services if not for the decision in 2001 to invest $32 million in an obscure Chinese web firm. While the success of the Tencent investment made Naspers the most valuable company in Africa, its market value suggests investors assign no value to its other businesses.

Naspers’ quandary is similar to those faced by other companies that made hugely successful investments in technology startups that eventually overshadowed their operating businesses, such as the winning bets Yahoo! Inc. and SoftBank Group Corp. made on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Van Dijk, CEO since 2014, has focused much of his attention on India and Europe and on e-commerce, delivery and online payments in his search for the next brightest ideas. He has about $9 billion of cash to spend after he trimmed Naspers’ stake in Tencent last year and received proceeds from the sale of Indian e-commerce startup Flipkart to Walmart Inc.

Mail.ru, Swiggy

Among the holdings in internet businesses that will be included in the Amsterdam-listed entity are Russian social network Mail.ru, German food delivery business Delivery Hero and Indian e-commerce startup Swiggy. Naspers will still control the new internet unit by keeping a 75 percent stake, with the remainder making up its free float.

The carve-out alone may not be enough to give Naspers the valuation bump van Dijk is seeking. The shares slumped 1.6 percent in Johannesburg. Tencent dropped 3 percent in Hong Kong.

Ken Rumph, an analyst at Jefferies Group LLC in London, said in an email that Naspers’ investment record outside of Tencent has been good, but that the company “will continue to struggle to persuade investors to value its management of assets at anything other than a discount.”

Still, the value of the newly listed company, yet to be named, could bump up against Europe’s largest tech firm, German software developer SAP SE, which has a market capitalization of 121 billion euros.

Too Big

Some investors have encouraged van Dijk to pursue listings, and he said on Monday he will look at other opportunities. His separation of pay-TV company MultiChoice this month focused Naspers entirely on consumer internet businesses.

Van Dijk said he chose Amsterdam partly because it’s a “great place to attract talent.” The listing requirements are very similar to Johannesburg and the company can keep the same management and board. Naspers’ executives are largely based in the Netherlands and travel extensively, as they seek to replicate the Tencent bet.

Amsterdam has become attractive to companies as Brexit uncertainties weigh on the U.K., including listings on the London Stock Exchange.

Thanks to its Tencent holding, Naspers accounts for almost a quarter of the Johannesburg exchange’s benchmark index, up from 5 percent just five years ago. As a result, many South African institutional investors have had to sell the shares because the weighting exceeds their limit for single stock holdings, the company said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Loni Prinsloo in Johannesburg at lprinsloo3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rebecca Penty at rpenty@bloomberg.net, Frank Connelly

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