Latest news with #Naspers
The South African
a day ago
- Business
- The South African
South Africa's richest men: How 7 tycoons built their fortunes
It's often said that making money is easy – when you already have some to begin with. In South Africa, a select group of businessmen has proven this adage true, using generational wealth, bold decisions, and smart investing to amass fortunes that stretch into the billions. From mining and media to finance and fashion, these seven South African billionaires have built and grown empires that span industries and continents. Collectively, they hold an astonishing $36.9 billion (R659 billion) in wealth, according to Forbes' real-time billionaire list. South Africa's wealthiest individuals highlight the power of compound wealth, strategic investing, and often, privileged starting points. While some leveraged family businesses, others capitalised on market shifts and global opportunities to build their empires. Though controversial to some, their financial influence is undeniable – not just in South Africa, but on the global stage. As the saying goes, 'the rich get richer.' And in this case, they're doing so with style, strategy, and staggering numbers. Meanwhile, in terms of the overall world list, South Africa-born Elon Musk remains the world's richest person with a reported $410.3 billion. Below, the list of the top seven richest South Africans in the world as of 28 July 2025. Rank Name Last week This week Source 197 Johann Rupert & family $14.5bn $13.5bn Luxury goods 279 Nicky Oppenheimer & family $10.5bn $10.4bn Diamonds 1 034 Koos Bekker $3.6bn $3.7bn Media, investments 1 166 Patrice Motsepe $3.3bn $3.4bn Mining 1 528 Michiel Le Roux $2.6bn $2.5bn Banking 2 052 Jannie Mouton & family $1.8bn $1.8bn Retail 2 207 Christo Wiese $1.7bn $1.6bn Financial services TOTAL $38bn $36.9bn Net Worth: $13.5 billion Industry: Luxury Goods, Finance At the top of the list is Johann Rupert, chair of Compagnie Financière Richemont, the Swiss luxury goods group behind brands like Cartier, Montblanc, and Dunhill. With significant holdings in financial services and investments, Rupert has masterfully expanded his wealth while maintaining a relatively low public profile. Net Worth: $10.4 billion Industry: Diamonds, Investment The former chairman of De Beers, Nicky Oppenheimer sold the family's 40% stake in the diamond giant to Anglo American for $5.1 billion in 2012. Since then, he has grown his fortune through private equity investments and conservation initiatives across Africa. Net Worth: $3.7 billion Industry: Media, Technology Known for turning Naspers into a global tech giant, Koos Bekker made headlines by investing early in China's Tencent. That decision alone brought in tens of billions for Naspers. Bekker's strategic leadership transformed the company from a local media firm into a global player. Net Worth: $3.4 billion Industry: Mining, Finance Patrice Motsepe made his fortune through African Rainbow Minerals, becoming South Africa's first black billionaire. A key figure in Black Economic Empowerment, he also holds a stake in financial services firm Sanlam and is a noted philanthropist and investor in sports. Net Worth: $2.5 billion Industry: Banking Founder of Capitec Bank, Michiel Le Roux revolutionised South Africa's banking landscape by creating a low-cost, accessible banking model. The bank's growth and profitability have made it a darling on the JSE and a consistent driver of Le Roux's wealth. Net Worth: $1.8 billion Industry: Investments The founder of PSG Group, Jannie Mouton earned the nickname 'Boere Buffett' for his savvy investment strategy. PSG has stakes in Capitec, Curro (education), and various agricultural and financial firms, making Mouton a quiet force in South African business. Net Worth: $1.6 billion Industry: Retail Despite setbacks with the collapse of Steinhoff, Christo Wiese remains a retail titan with interests in Shoprite and other ventures. Once South Africa's richest man, Wiese is rebuilding and diversifying his portfolio. Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1 Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Bluesky for the latest news.
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Is This Stock the Best Way to Play Chinese AI?
While restricted from the latest and greatest chips for now, over half the world's AI researchers are in China. As such, growth investors should try to have some China-related AI exposure in their portfolios. Here's how a South African stock may offer the best way to play Chinese AI. 10 stocks we like better than Naspers › Would you believe that the best way to play China's AI ambitions may be a South African stock? Artificial intelligence has the potential to change the economy. As such, investors should have exposure to some AI companies in their portfolios -- and that includes Chinese exposure. Even Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently noted that China is home to half of the world's AI researchers. And the January unveiling of the groundbreaking DeepSeek R1 model showed how China is able to innovate cutting-edge AI, even with limited silicon access. Nevertheless, investing in China carries risks pertaining to its economy, its government, and the market mechanics of owning Chinese stocks. That's why the best way to expose oneself to Chinese AI may be South African holding company Naspers (OTC: NPSNY). It's still very early in the AI races, and in truth, it's hard to know who is going to win out. It could be an upstart AI lab such as DeepSeek in China or OpenAI in the U.S., or one of the existing big tech giants. In this investor's opinion, the existing incumbents are the best bet. These companies have huge technological and financial resources to invest in AI, and AI should also enable existing large businesses to boost revenue and lower costs through better automation and data science. That's why Tencent (OTC: TCEHY) seems like good bet to be a big winner from Chinese AI. Tencent has the largest social media platform in China in WeChat, with more than 1.4 billion users. It's also the largest video game publisher in the China, the largest video and music streaming company, one of the two large digital payments companies, and one of China's cloud computing giants. In addition, Tencent is building its own large model, called Hunyuan, which could lead to vast new AI opportunities if it ends being more performant than DeepSeek and other competitors over time. Tencent stock doesn't trade on U.S. stock exchanges, but it does trade over the counter as an American depositary receipt. However, a better way to play Tencent may be through its largest shareholder, European-domiciled Prosus (OTC: PROSY), which owns more than 23% of Tencent's stock. And the best way to invest in Prosus may be in its largest shareholder, Naspers, which owns 43% of Prosus. Naspers is a 110-year-old South African media company that was fortunate enough to invest in Tencent when it was just a startup in 2001. That investment eventually grew to be worth hundreds of billions, dwarfing Naspers' original business. Naspers then sold portions of its Tencent stake over time, investing in new businesses across food delivery, fintech, classifieds, e-commerce, ed-tech, and other tech startups. However, Naspers began to trade at a huge discount to the value of not only its net assets but also its Tencent stake alone. Management attributed that growing discount to its large size relative to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The thinking was that large index funds cap their asset weightings, which meant they had to sell Naspers stock once it reached a certain-sized allocation. In 2019, Naspers created Prosus, a new entity it listed on the larger Euronext Exchange in Amsterdam, and spun it off to shareholders. Today, Naspers owns about 43% of Prosus, which owns all of Naspers' assets outside of South Africa, while Naspers owns some small additional South African assets on its own. The plan didn't really work, though, as, Prosus still trades at a 30% discount its total net assets and even a 9% discount to the value of its Tencent stake alone. Meanwhile, Naspers trades at an even bigger 36% discount to the value of its assets, which is mainly just its 43% stake in Prosus. Owning Tencent at a discount is an attractive proposition, but of course it won't make much of a difference if the valuation gap never closes. That being said, a new development at Prosus could change this dynamic. Before this year, Prosus' businesses were free cash flow negative, so the company was dependent on Tencent stock sales and Tencent's dividend for cash for funding. However, in fiscal 2025, which ended in March, Prosus' non-Tencent businesses turned free cash flow positive for the first time, excluding Tencent's dividend, generating $36 million in positive free cash flow and improving free cash flow by nearly $1 billion over the past three years. Prosus also has a new CEO in Fabricio Bloisi, who took over the job exactly one year ago. Bloisi is an entrepreneur and the very successful former CEO of iFood, now the largest food delivery company in Brazil, which Prosus fully acquired back in 2022. Having a proven startup operator is a contrast with Prosus' prior leadership, and recent results appear to show Bloisi is raising the bar on execution. Before today, if Prosus wanted to buy a company or repurchase its stock at a big discount, it would have to sell part of its Tencent stake. That probably played into the "conglomerate discount," as investors may not have liked the capital allocation of selling a high-quality business in Tencent to buy more risky and unprofitable startups. However, if the other operating businesses continue to grow positive free cash flow outside Tencent, that could change sentiment. Prosus wouldn't have to sell as much or any Tencent stock and could benefit from future compound earnings growth. If a Prosus/Naspers valuation rerating occurs, that could make Prosus and/or Naspers the most attractive way to play Tencent -- and with it, the growth of Chinese AI. Before you buy stock in Naspers, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Naspers wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $713,547!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $966,931!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,062% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 177% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 23, 2025 Billy Duberstein and/or his clients have positions in Naspers and Prosus. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia and Tencent. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Is This Stock the Best Way to Play Chinese AI? was originally published by The Motley Fool
Zawya
27-06-2025
- Business
- Zawya
South Africa: Takealot grows revenue to fend off Amazon rivalry
South African online retail group, Takealot grew its full-year revenue by 15%, with growth supported by investments in logistics, enhanced customer offerings and its subscription service as it faces competition from new market entrant Amazon. Technology investor Naspers said that Takealot Group's revenue rose by 15% in local currency to $872m for the fiscal year ending 31 March. Despite this growth, the group posted an adjusted EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) loss of $13m. the group's general merchandise e-commerce platform and Amazon's direct competitor, saw its gross merchandise value (GMV) increase by 13%, with revenue climbing 17% and order volumes up by 15%. Takealot also owns on-demand platform Mr D, which offers restaurants, groceries and other shops. "I think their (Takealot) performance in the last year was ahead of our expectations, actually," Prosus and Naspers Group chief financial officer, Nico Marais told Reuters. "We did invest in our marketplace elements to improve the business, and we actually saw Amazon moving, probably not at the speed that we originally expected, which was to our benefit. So we are ready to fight off competition." The battle for online consumer spending intensified throughout 2024, with both global and local players investing heavily to capture market share. Amazon has since expanded its South African service to include non-perishable groceries. The US online retail giant launched in South Africa in May 2024. To defend its leading market share, Takealot said it will strengthen its market presence by enhancing its loyalty programme, TakealotMore, which it hopes will attract and keep existing customers. "The business will also focus on growth through range extension and key categories while improving unit economics through cost optimisation, particularly delivery costs and stock efficiencies," it added. The retailer is also investing in artificial intelligence to gain better understanding of its customers, identify trends, personalise marketing campaigns and automate customer experiences.
The Citizen
25-06-2025
- Business
- The Citizen
Media24 takes a knock
The changes in its operations led to a significant decline in Media24's revenue and earnings. South Africa's largest media company, Media24, has reported a decline in revenue and earnings for the year ended March 2025. This follows the discontinuation of most of Media24's printed newspapers. These included Beeld, Rapport, City Press, Daily Sun, and Soccer Laduma, as well as the digital PDF editions of Volksblad and Die Burger Oos-Kaap. Parent company Naspers released its financial results on Monday. The global technology giant said it has also divested both its logistics operations, called M24 Logistics and On the Dot. Media24 realigns media operations The financial results also stated that the company has realigned its media operations to focus on two digital news brands, News24 and Netwerk24, by closing the digital content hub SNL24, divesting community newspapers and soccer titles, and transitioning the Sunday newspapers Rapport and City Press into digital-only brands, residing at Netwerk24 and News24, respectively. Naspers stated that Media24 is a leading digital media group in South Africa, with interests in digital news media, magazines, newspapers, book publishing, and television content production. 'It publishes several magazines and two newspapers and reaches 1 million average daily unique browsers, generating 9.7 million average daily pageviews across its digital platforms.' ALSO READ: Big news play: Media24 sells On the Dot, shifts to digital-first focus Media24 declines in revenue The changes have led to a significant decline in revenue and earnings for Media24. Revenue declined by 17% from $175 million (R3.199 billion) in 2024 to $141 million (R2.577 billion) in 2025. 'Trading results were eroded by the financial impact of the redesign, as well as an investment in foundation-phase schoolbook submissions to the South African Department of Basic Education,' read the results. Looking ahead Naspers said Media24 has established a strong base for AI use, with early outputs, enhanced by launching a GenAI circle, training sessions, and editorial workshops, which are focused mainly on back-end operations in its media divisions. 'These ranged from content summaries, translations and transcriptions to creating audiobooks, copy-editing, the creation of visuals, launching the contextual targeting tool Match24 for advertisers, and incorporating an AI-driven 'story sentiment' tracker to enhance brand-safe advertising, all under close human supervision. 'Looking forward to the financial year 2026, we remain committed to the valuable role we play in our society and democracy at large, while building a sustainable future for Media24 as a profitable digital media business focused on content production for news, television and books.' NOW READ: Media24 sells On the Dot, shifts to digital-first focus
IOL News
25-06-2025
- Business
- IOL News
Prosus' strategy for AI-driven growth in global lifestyle and ecommerce markets
Prosus CEO Fabricio Bloisi said at their 2024 Capital Markets Day that he expected that the global internet group, which had constantly reinvented itself originally from a printing company in South Africa, was expected to report sustained earnings growth over the next few years. Image: Supplied Prosus has structured plans to increase earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (Ebitda) by 3.5 times in three years from the results reported this week, CEO of the Amsterdam based and JSE listed internet group, Fabricio Bloisi said Tuesday. He said in a presentation at the Naspers subsidiary's Capital Markets Day that this target would likely also include some acquisitions. He stated that while this was not an overly 'aggressive target', the world remained a place of many uncertainties at present, and they did not wish to provide a detailed description of their plans. He also said that the share buybacks would continue. The group had already bought back 29% of its shares since it listed in 2019. 'The discount (to net asset value) that the share is trading at is around 30% at present, a great opportunity, don't lose it,' he told an auditorium of investment specialists and researchers, and staff, in Amsterdam. He said that in the past financial year - the results were published Monday - the strong growth had been based on a 32% increase in dividend from the investment in China internet giant Tencent. The group's Ebitda had increased by more than 100%, group costs had increased by 10%, and the dividend was raised by 100%. In the 2026 financial year, the dividend from Tencent had increased by 24% so far. The group anticipated an increase in Ebitda of at least 83%, and the intention was to reduce group costs by 10%, 'which will provide us with a great opportunity to grow. Some might say this is optimistic, but we have shown that we deliver,' he said. He expressed confidence that the management of the group, which has some 2 billion customers in Europe, Souoth Africa, India and South America, would continue to grow substantially in the next few years based on the fast uptake of its AI-linked food service, fintech, and ecommerce innovations and through the optimisation of its workforce and ecommerce platforms. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. 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Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad loading He mentioned that in the past financial year, the first he had been in office and since the group embarked on a new strategy, some $2.6 billion of businesses had been sold or closed, and the management had to take many decisions that were difficult as it entailed selling or closing businesses that 'are not winning' and which had involved the loss of staff. He said that their business culture was based on 'keeping optimistic until you prevail, but on the other hand "we face the brutal facts.' He said they intended to build the biggest AI-driven lifestyle and ecommerce company outside the US, and the only way to be the best company during the next five years, which was predicted to be the biggest and fastest wave of global change due to AI in three hundred years, was to be the leader in this change. Unlike start-ups, however, and unlike other large global internet groups that were able to write $10 billion cheques to acquire news business, Prosus had already 10 trillion tokens of data at its disposal from which to develop its AI business, he said. Prosus's ecosystems span three core geographies: Europe, Latin America, and India, which are large markets where there is 'clear space and an open field of opportunity,' he said. He mentioned that Europe, with almost the same size economy as the US in terms of GDP, held significant potential through further ecommerce innovations, but while the group complies with all European Union regulations, he believed the market was over-regulated. He saidthat in global internet markets, waiting two years for a decision means 'we are already lost.' He noted, however, that recent interactions with the European Commission had provided some indication of greater flexibility in the future. Euro Beinet, Global Head of AI and Data Services at Prosus, said they had increased the number of engineers more than tenfold from the 60 they employed in 2018. He said that the group had so far developed some 800 different AI models for its business, and more than $100 million had been invested in AI development. He added that the group had also invested in more than 20 AI start-up companies that were developing models that could aid the group workforce or that could help reinvent the group's ecommerce offering. The intention was over time to be able to make every single digital surface or platform an AI interface. BUSINESS REPORT Visit:
