(Bloomberg) -- Prosus NV reported a first-half profit as the technology investor sold stakes in online businesses in China and South Africa.
Group adjusted earnings before interest and taxes totaled $60 million in the six months through end-September from a loss a year earlier, the Amsterdam-based company said in a statement Monday. The group sold more than $2 billion of assets during the period, including exiting its Trip.com position in China.
“We have about $10 billion available to deploy,” said Prosus President and Chief Investment Officer Ervin Tu in an interview. Prosus is spending a lot of time assessing investments in areas it’s already active in, including marketplaces, food delivery and fintech, “and AI is an important supporter of all of that,” he added.
The Euronext-listed technology firm will invest in AI across its businesses but will consider writing “larger checks” to companies operating in its ecosystem, Tu said. India is one of the more attractive growth markets, he added.
Prosus was spun out from Cape Town-headquartered Naspers Ltd. and listed in Amsterdam about five years ago. Through Naspers, the company made a blockbuster investment in Tencent in 2001, when it paid $34 million for a 50% stake. Today, it owns about a quarter of the company, which has a market value of about $480 billion. The group’s investment in the Chinese tech giant has distorted Prosus’s stock price and created a gap between the value of the stake and the rest of the group’s businesses.
The Prosus team has invested in emerging market technology companies searching for the next Tencent. It has sold stakes in several of those bets in e-commerce recently. On top of the Trip.com sale, the group sold South African online fashion retailer Superbalist, and it has agreed to sell its Romanian food delivery company Tazz. In November, after the period, Prosus sold down shares worth more than $500 million in the initial public offering of Indian food delivery company Swiggy Ltd.
During the period, group revenue was up 26% and adjusted Ebit for its e-commerce portfolio increased five times to $181 million. An ongoing buyback program has created $36 billion of value since it started, the company said in the statement. “We expect $6.2 billion in revenues for the full year, we expect to continue to grow ahead of 20% on an organic basis,” interim Chief Financial Officer Nico Marais said in an interview.
The Naspers chief executive officer in South Africa, Phuti Mahanyele-Dabengwa, has also been nominated to join the Prosus and Naspers boards as executive director.
Prosus shares were little changed in Amsterdam. Naspers shares rose 2.1% at 10:59 a.m. in Johannesburg
(Updates with comments from CIO Ervin Tu and shares)
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