🇿🇦 Mzansi Market Memo — Sunday Special Edition

Happy Sunday gents and gentleladies,
Welcome to the very first Sunday Special Edition of Mzansi Market Memo. Each Sunday, we’ll tackle one big question — a structure, a strategy, or a headline that needs unpacking.

This week: What’s the actual difference between Naspers and Prosus?

Let’s get to the money.

🎯 Executive Focus — Naspers vs Prosus: A Tale of Two Listings

TLDR:
Naspers owns Prosus. Prosus owns Tencent. And the entire setup is a gymnastics routine to fix a JSE valuation headache.

📌 The Setup
Naspers — South Africa’s tech and media giant — became globally famous for its early $32m investment in Tencent. But the Tencent stake grew so large it started to distort the JSE itself.

To fix this, Naspers created Prosus, listing it in Amsterdam to house its international tech investments and reduce local index pressure.

📈 The Structure Today
Here’s the simplified chain:

Naspers → owns ~43% of Prosus
Prosus → owns ~25% of Tencent

Naspers effectively owns 10.75% of Tencent

Prosus also holds stakes in food delivery, edtech, classifieds, and fintech ventures across the world.

💰 Why it Matters

• Naspers was trading at a discount to its Tencent stake — an issue for investors.

• Listing Prosus unlocked global capital and helped narrow the valuation gap.

• The two firms are slowly unwinding cross-holdings to further close the discount.

• There may be a flavour of using the structure as a mechanism to get capital out of South Africa - but we won’t get into that today.

But it’s still messy — both trade below net asset value (NAV), and buying one means you’re exposed to the other (and Tencent).

🎯 Investor Takeaway

• Buying Naspers gives you Prosus + Tencent with local flavour.

• Buying Prosus gives you Tencent with less JSE baggage.

• Check discount-to-NAV spreads regularly — they shift.

🧠 Final Word

Naspers and Prosus are a masterclass in value unlocking — and capital gymnastics. Whether you hold either or just want to understand SA’s most iconic tech investment story, this is one worth watching closely.

Every Sunday, we’ll bring you a breakdown like this — one question, one deep dive, no noise. In the future, Sunday editions will be exclusively for those who have helped the channel grow - so get your referrals in!

📩 Got a structure or company you'd like unpacked?
Hit reply or DM me your suggestion — and we’ll dive in.

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Mzansi Market Memo is compiled daily with a special edition on Sundays by Rayhaan @ the Memo for investors and operators who want to understand more than just the headlines.
This memo is for informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Still, we’d buy low and read high.