I’ll confirm when chatting to new Naspers CEO Bob van Dijk on CNBC Africa’s Power Lunch later today, but from the official announcement (see below) it doesn’t seem as though there will be much change in direction for the House that Koos Bekker built. Investment in organic growth and bolt-on acquisitions came to R7.7bn in the year to end March and is set to continue under Van Dijk’s guidance. Ditto the big television play, DTT. Be interested to hear how the Naspers team view new local ecommerce competitor takealot.com and whether they paid much attention to the famous leaked digital strategy document of the New York Times – the organisation against which the head of Sequoia Capital recently compared Naspers (very favourably) against. Catch the interview on DSTV Channel 410 from noon. If you miss it, the transcript will be up around 4pm. – AH Â
From Naspers:
Naspers today announced financial results for the year ended 31 March 2014. Consolidated revenue grew a robust 26% to R62,7bn, driven by both internet and pay-television businesses. Growth was funded mainly by development spend, which accelerated 79% to R7,7bn. This step-up limited core headline earnings, considered by the board to be an indication of sustainable earnings performance, to R8,6bn, marginally higher than last year. Core headline earnings per share amounted to R21,81 and a dividend increase of 10% to R4,25 per share has been proposed.
“We had a lively year with progress across several businesses,” said Naspers chair, Ton Vosloo. “Our established businesses performed very well and we stepped up our investment in new growth opportunities, particularly in ecommerce.”
Driven by strong growth in etail, revenues from ecommerce activities increased 64% to R20,3bn. “As this is an area of expansion, development spend rose as we scaled operations, increased the number of focus markets in classifieds and strengthened our talent pool. Consequently the trading loss widened to R5,3bn,” said Basil Sgourdos, new CFO of the group. The year saw improving profitability from the Allegro marketplace business and some classifieds and online price-comparison operations. Several classifieds markets evidenced growth ahead of competitors.
The pay television business, which covers 50 countries on the African continent, reported 20% growth in revenues to R36,3bn. Total subscribers increased by a record 1,3 million, taking the base to over 8 million homes. Continued expansion of digital terrestrial (DTT) services, more investment in local content and an increase in online service offerings resulted in 13% growth in trading profit to R8,5bn.
The print media remains exposed to challenging global conditions and experienced a tough year. Revenues were flat and margins declined.
Naspers’s share of core earnings from associates, including Tencent in China and Mail.ru Group in Russia, increased by 46% to R10,2bn.
““Our goal is to invest in growth businesses that will deliver value over the long term. With this in mind, we will continue to invest heavily for organic expansion and may also acquire new businesses within our fields of focus,” said new Naspers CEO, Bob van Dijk. “Our belief is that, through a combination of attractive markets with development potential and appealing customer product offerings such as online classifieds, etail and DTT, we have realistic, solid prospects for growth and value creation over time.”
Click here for the detailed SENS announcement of the year end results.
