Naspers reports 25pc rise in full-year core profits

JOHANNESBURG: South African media and e-commerce group Naspers on Friday reported a 25% rise in annual core headline earnings per share, thanks to reduced losses at its e-commerce business.

Founded more than 100 years ago in Stellenbosch, South Africa, Naspers has transformed itself from a newspaper publisher into a $104 billion giant with e-commerce and internet investments including a valuable stake in China's Tencent .

The company, which also has e-commerce holdings covering areas such as food delivery, classified ads and online retail, said its core headline earnings per share from continuing operations reached 694 cents in the year through March, compared with 553 cents the year before.

However Naspers said it had postponed the planned stock market listing of its global consumer internet assets due to an administrative error by an unspecified third party service provider. It said it remained committed to the listing.

Core headline EPS is Naspers' main profit measure that strips out non-operational and one-off items. Headline earnings rose 26% to $3 billion.

Naspers said its e-commerce division which houses assets such as OLX, the biggest classifieds sites in India and Brazil, narrowed its trading loss (at the EBITDA level) by 14%, or 15% in local currency and adjusted for acquisitions and disposals, to $556 million.

"Trading losses in e-commerce reduced significantly with the classifieds business continuing its margin improvement to become profitable in the aggregate for the year ended 31 March 2019," it said in a statement.

The other e-commerce assets also continued to expand, with online retail trading losses almost halving and the Payments and Fintech business narrowing its trading loss margin to 12% from 22% last year.

The internet business, which houses its Chinese money spinner Tencent, saw trading profit rise 11% as many e-commerce units boosted their profitability and Tencent delivered a stable performance, it said.

Shares in Naspers were up 0.46% at 3,494 rand by 1452 GMT.

The company said a shareholders' meeting to approve the flotation of its international internet assets on Euronext Amsterdam, with a secondary listing on the Johannesburg exchange, had been cancelled and reconvened for Aug. 23.