Digital and lifestyle conglomerate Naspers has bought back another tranche of shares, this time to the tune of R475.6 million.
Based on ITWeb’s calculations, that brings the total amount of value returned to shareholders since it announced it would be repurchasing shares five years ago, to R134.33 billion – which includes accounting for the share split it implemented on 6 October.
Naspers is the seventh most valuable company on the JSE, out of 266 listings, according to website Listcorp, with a market capitalisation of R967.2 billion. That is up 6% since 10 September.
The company, which has operations across the globe, has been buying back stock since 2020 to give investors a larger stake in the group’s operations outside of Tencent, which has been driving value and resulted in Naspers shares not representing the full basket of its operations.
Having bought the additional shares, which it said late yesterday are for the period 27 to 31 October, Naspers now owns 18.7% in its own stock.
Listed on the JSE with a secondary listing on A2X, Naspers owns its Tencent stake via Prosus, in which it holds a 56.92% majority stake. Naspers indirectly acquired 46.5% of Tencent in 2001.
Prosus is the JSE’s most valuable company, with a market value of R2.86 trillion, followed by miner BHP, at R2.43 trillion.
In addition to the share buyback programme, Naspers split its shares so that every shareholder now owns five shares for every one owned before 6 October.
Even though this led to an initial misleading drop of 20% on the JSE, the split gives shareholders a bigger stake in the company. In reality, each investor's combined stake remained the same, and they would continue to either gain or lose percentage depending on the share price movements.
The most recent share split, Naspers’s fourth share split in its history, showed positive momentum, with the stock up almost 4% over five days at its post-split price. Shortly after the market opened this morning, the stock was already up 0.85%.
Year-to-date, it has gained 50%, with its five-year growth coming in at 79%. For comparison, the JSE’s All Share index is up 16% year-to-date and 57% over the past five years.
However, an indication that shares were being driven by Naspers’s Tencent stake can be found in the fact that the stock has dropped 3.81% in a month almost to the day as of the date of the split.
Stock analysis web site MLQ.ai lists all Naspers share splits over time: July 2019, September 2019, September 2023, and the current October 2025 split.
Naspers, which has a strong presence across Latin America, India and Europe in addition to South Africa, reported revenue up 20% to R130 billion for the full year, based on the exchange rate as of the end of its fiscal year to March. Its core headline earnings, a key measure of profitability, rose 46% to R56 billion.
The company, founded in 1915 by attorney William Angus Hofmeyr as De Nasionale Pers (The National Press), is increasing its investment in artificial intelligence, describing it as an “indispensable tool” that will underpin future growth across its platforms.
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