 | |
 Naspers headquarters inForeshore, Cape Town | |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| JSE:NPN LSE: NPSN | |
| Industry | Internet,E-commerce, fintech, food delivery |
| Founded | 12 May 1915; 109 years ago (1915-05-12) |
| Founder | W.A. Hofmeyr |
| Headquarters | , South Africa |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Koos Bekker (chair)[1] Fabricio Bloisi (CEO) Phuti Mahanyele-Dabengwa (CEO, South Africa) |
| Revenue |  US$22.1 billion(FY 2020)[2][3] |
| US$3.7 billion(FY 2020)[4] | |
| Total assets | US$36.3 billion(FY 2020)[3] |
| Total equity | US$29.93 billion(FY 2020)[3] |
| Owner | |
| Subsidiaries | Prosus (42.76%) (as at 7 March 2025) Media24 Takealot.com Naspers Foundry |
| Website | www |
Naspers Limited (until 1998 Die Nasionale Pers) is a South Africanmultinationalinternet,technology and multimedia holding companyheadquartered inCape Town, with interests in online retail, publishing andventure capital investment. Naspers' principal shareholder is itsDutch listed investment subsidiaryProsus, which owns approximately 49% of its parent as part of across ownership structure.[5]
Founded in 1915 by attorneyWilliam Angus Hofmeyr [af], Die Nasionale Pers was the largest publishing company inSouth Africa throughout the 20th century with interests across newspapers, magazines and books. In the 1980s, the company began to diversify, launching a subscription television service and investing in markets outside of South Africa for the first time.
In 2001, Naspers made an early investment in Chinese technology firmTencent and became increasingly focused on the global consumer internet sector. In 2019, Naspers listed its global internet investment business unit Prosus (including a 31% stake in Tencent) on Euronext Amsterdam.
Naspers currently owns a 56.92% stake in Prosus[5] and wholly ownsMedia24 (Africa's largest publishing company),Takealot.com (South Africa's largest online retailer) and Naspers Foundry, a South African focused venture capital fund.
In December 1914,[6]: 164 twelve years after the end of theSecond Boer War which had devastated most of South Africa and left most Afrikaners impoverished and subject to theBritish Empire, and during the pro-GermanMaritz rebellion, a group of sixteen prominentCapeAfrikaners decided at a meeting at District Bank manager Hendrik Bergh's house inStellenbosch to form a publishing company that would supportAfrikaner nationalism in theUnion of South Africa.[7][8][9] This meeting led to Willie A. Hofmeyr, a well-known Cape lawyer andNational Party organizer, foundingDie Nasionale Pers Beperkt (National Press Ltd) in 1915 as a publisher of newspapers and magazines.[10][11] The firm's name was commonly shortened toNaspers (DieNasionalePers Beperk), the contraction eventually becoming used even by the company itself.
The launch of Die Nasionale Pers was financed byJannie Marais, a prominent Stellenbosch farmer who had made a fortune in theKimberleydiamond mines and was the largest shareholder of the District Bank.[7][9] The press was closely associated with the National Party,[12] founded by GeneralJ. B. M. Hertzog in January 1914.[13] It began publishing the Afrikaans-language dailyDie Burger (initiallyDe Burger in Dutch) in June 1915, followed by its first magazine,Die Huisgenoot (initiallyDe Huisgenoot), in 1916.[14]
In 1917, Die Nasionale Pers bought the weeklyBloemfontein-based Afrikaans newspaperHet Volksblad (nowVolksblad), the first expansion beyond the Cape Province for the company.[15]: 410 By 1924, the links to the National Party were formalised.[6]: 165 In 1925,Die Volksblad started publishing daily. In 1937, it startedDie Oosterlig in the Eastern Cape.[15]: 410 Also in 1937, Die Nasionale Pers set up the company Voortrekkerpers in the Transvaal to support the National Party in Transvaal by publishingDie Transvaler.[15]: 411 Initially the Cape National Party tried to control the extremism of the National Party in the Transvaal by appointingHendrik Verwoerd as the paper's first editor but he would side with Transvaal branch andNationale Pers gave up editorial control in 1939.[15]: 411 In order to combat the influence ofAlbert Hertzog in the Transvaal National Party, Die Nasionale Pers introduced a more enlightened Sunday newspaper in 1965 in the province called theDie Beeld in competition to theDagbreek.[15]: 411 By 1970, these two papers, the latter owned byPerskor, to merge into a paper called theRapport managed by both groups.[15]: 411 In 1965, Die Nasionale Pers launched their first English-language magazineFairlady. In 1974, the Afrikaans newspaperBeeld began publishing daily for the Johannesburg market.[14]
Die Nasionale Pers entered the South African general and educational book publishing markets in 1918, initially publishing exclusively inAfrikaans. The company expanded to English-language titles in 1919 andXhosa in 1922. It spun off its book publishing operations in 1950 into a separate business,Nasionale Boekhandel. In 1963, Die Nasionale Pers recommenced educational publishing operations through subsidiary Nasou.[14]
In 1973, Die Nasionale Pers took back control of Nasionale Boekhandel, before acquiring another publishing house Human & Rousseau in 1977. The press continued to develop its book publishing business during the 1980s, forming the Afrikaans-language book club Leserskring in 1979 and the English-language book club Leisure Hour.[14] In 1986, Die Nasionale Pers acquired publisher JL van Schaik.
In 1984, Die Nasionale Pers acquired Drum Publications, publisher of the Sunday newspaperCity Press and weekly magazinesDrum andTrue Love & Family, titles focused on a black readership.[14]
In 1986, Die Nasionale Pers formed a partnership with other South African publishing companies and launchedpay-TV serviceM-Net.[16] M-Net proved successful and, with sister companiesMultiChoice andM-Web, steadily expanded its operations both in South Africa and internationally throughout the 1990s.
In 1994, Die Nasionale Pers became publicly listed on theJohannesburg Stock Exchange in South Africa.[17] The company also obtained a Level I American Depository Receipt listing on theLondon Stock Exchange.
In 1998, the company formally changed its name to Naspers Limited.[14] Naspers became increasingly focused on digital businesses; launching South African web portal Media24 and online retailer Kalahari.com in 1998 and Chinese-focused web portal SportCN in 2000. In May 2001, Naspers purchased 46.5 percent of Chinese internet companyTencent, owner ofWeChat, and an array of fintech apps and mobile games, from early investors includingPCCW (the owner ofNow TV) andIDG Capital.[18][19] The investment has been referred to as one of the most successful venture capital deals of all time.[20] Making Naspers the most valuable publicly traded business in Africa by 2017.[21]
In 2003, Naspers took full ownership of subscription television business M-Net and its sister companies MultiChoice and M-Web, integrating their extensive operations across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.[22] Naspers also launched new publishing ventures in Nigeria and Hungary in 2003.[14]
With the success of the investment in Tencent, Naspers became an investor in a number of consumer internet startups. In January 2007 Naspers purchased a 30% share of Russia's largest internet companyVK (company) (formerly Mail.ru Group) for $165 million.[23]
Naspers had a particular focus on India, investing more than $4 billion from 2014 to 2019,[24] across multiple sectors, including intoByju andibibo. In December 2018, Naspers invested $1 billion into Indian online food ordering and delivery serviceSwiggy,[25] the largest single investment made, outside of China, into a food tech company.[26]
In 2015, Naspers merged its South African–focused Kalahari.com online retail business with market leaderTakealot.com, acquiring a 46% stake in the merged company and creating South Africa's largest online retailer.[27] By 2018, Naspers owned 96% of Takealot.com.[27]
In December 2016, Naspers announced that it had entered into an agreement to sell telecommunications company M-Web toInternet Solutions (a subsidiary of Japanese telecommunications conglomerateNippon Telegraph and Telephone), pending approval by the South African competition authorities.[28][29] On 9 May 2017, it was announced that the South African competition authorities approved the proposed sale of M-Web, with 31 May 2017 being the effective commencement date.[30][31]
In March 2018 Naspers sold part of its stake in Tencent, raising some $10 billion to fund other investments. At the time, its initial investment of $32 million in Tencent was valued at over $175 billion.[32]
Naspers' video entertainment business was spun off asMultiChoice Group, on 27 February 2019, represented as MCG on theJohannesburg Stock Exchange.[33] Shares in Multichoice Group were unbundled to Naspers shareholders, with Naspers retaining no stake in the newly listed company.[34]
Still in 2019, Naspers listed its global internet investment business onEuronext Amsterdam asProsus,[35][36] which became Europe's largest consumer Internet company on its market debut. Share values gained over 25 percent on the day of itsIPO, with Prosus' market capitalisation exceeding 125 billion pounds (US$138 billion). Prosus reported profits of $4.2 billion for its fiscal year ending 31 March 2019.
Naspers Labs, designed in partnership with RLabs and its founder Marlon Parker,[37] launched in 2019 as an economic initiative for unemployed youth in South Africa.[38]
In May 2021, Naspers announced a share swap deal with its Dutch-listed subsidiary Prosus in an attempt to reduce the discount between the asset value of the companies and their market capitalisation.[39] The deal, successfully completed in August 2021, reduced Naspers' stake in Prosus to 56.92% and gave Prosus an approximately 49% share in its parent company.[5]
Following the2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Naspers (through its subsidiary Prosus) wrote off its 27.29% investment, previously valued at US$769 million, in the Russian internet companyVK.[40]
Documents collected byOpenSecrets revealed how Die Nasionale Pers funded theNational Party (NP) duringapartheid, and that the NP also held 74,000 shares in Die Nasionale Pers in 1984.[citation needed]
In a letter written toF.W. de Klerk, on 17 August 1989, the then managing director of Die Nasionale Pers, Ton Vosloo, reaffirmed the company's support of the National Party. Vosloo reminded de Klerk of its donation of R150,000 (approximately R1-million today), made to the NP before the 1987 elections. The company had then also pledged a further R220,000 in support of the NP ahead of South Africa's last race-based general elections, in September 1989. Vosloo ended his letter, promising funding to the NP in Transvaal, by adding that "our newspaper Beeld in the Transvaal is your ally and we trust that this formidable combination will wipe out the competition."[41]
In 1997, theTruth and Reconciliation Commission requested that Die Nasionale Pers make a submission about the years between 1960 and 1994 (thus, broadly, between theSharpeville massacre, in March 1960, and the firstdemocratic elections of April 1994), specifically, the media's role during this period. Die Nasionale Pers refused to comply, which led to 127 employees each making an individual submission to the TRC, apologising for their role in the apartheid years. They said Die Nasionale Pers newspapers had formed an integral part of the power structure which implemented and maintained apartheid through, for instance, supporting the NP in elections and referendums.[42][43]
In 2015, Media24 CEO Esmare Weideman issued a case-limited apology citing a single employee, Conrad Sidego, who had experienced problems with separate facilities. She did not issue an unqualified apology for Naspers's role in supporting apartheid.[44]
Naspers has two principal business units; Prosus & Naspers South Africa.
Prosus is the largest consumer internet company in Europe, and among the largest technology investors in the world, operating across a variety of platforms and geographies.[45] As part of a share swap deal announced in May 2021,[46] Prosus acquired a 49% stake in its parent company Naspers.[47] Other major holdings of Prosus include:
Prosus is also the largest shareholder of social Internet platforms:
Naspers South Africa operates three media, e-commerce & venture capital businesses in South Africa:
Naspers wholly ownsMedia24, Africa's largest publisher, printer, and distributor of magazines and related products, as well its largest newspaper publisher.
Naspers wholly ownsTakealot.com, South Africa's largest online retailer.
Naspers Foundry is a South Africa-focused early stage venture capital fund that invests in firms that "address big societal needs".Naspers Foundry ceased investment operations in March 2023, though it maintained its existing investments.[52]
