5 ms·

I hadn't heard of Prosus or Naspers before this. Apparently Naspers owns 31.2% of Tencent. Time to revisit my assumptions with respect to how companies are owne

I hadn't heard of Prosus or Naspers before this. Apparently Naspers owns 31.2% of Tencent. Time to revisit my assumptions with respect to how companies are owned.

est 5y ago
Reminds me of "Tencent owns reddit" threads on reddit then someone points out that Naspers owns Tencent. Hilarity ensures.
- ak217 5y ago
  Tencent also owns almost half of Epic.
- jedberg 5y ago
  Which was extra funny given Tencent's tiny ownership share in reddit.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    In the business world it doesn't take much to exert a big influence on a company.
tpmx 5y ago
Indeed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naspers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naspers is a fascinating read.
aixi 5y ago
>Time to revisit my assumptions with respect to how companies are owned. And what would those be? I'm curious
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Possibly how weird it is to think of the ownership of ownerships and stakes. Nested Say there is a large [activist] investor -> who owns 5% of Naspers -> which has a sizeable stake in Prosus -> which has a sizeable stake in Tencent -> which has a sizeable stake in Epic Games (40%+) OR a majority stake in Tencent Music -> which has a respectable stake in Spotify (7.5%). Not to mention Tencent’s own stake in Spotify (1-3%)
  - moonchild 5y ago
    Is it advantageous for a company to own some of its competitor's stock? Does it represent a conflict of interest?
    - skinnymuch 5y ago
      Spotify and Tencent Music swapped shares when they did a deal together. There is some hand wringing with all the gaming companies Tencent owns or has a stake in. They own Supercell which was worth $10B+ before. League of Legends parent Riot. A stake in Kakao Daum that does gaming stuff too. On top of the 40% of Fortnite parent Epic Games, they own 10 or 15% of PUBG parent Bluehole. They own 5%+ stakes in Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard (which owns Candy Crush parent King Games). They are a huge game publisher in China and okay in rest of Asia. So they get to publish a lot of games like WoW in China. They own a handful of smaller studios and a stake in probably a dozen other gaming studios at minimum. Usually when I say studios I mean outside China too. Miniclip and Agar.io might be familiar to people. 20% of Glu Mobile too which makes a lot of the branded kitsch apps for Kardashians etc. they just got bought so not sure if ownership remains. Tencent is the closest successor to Berkshire Hathaway. Their other minority stakes are wild too. Minority stakes each worth billions include JD.com(Amazon of China), Kakao Daum as mentioned, Snap[chat], Tesla, Pinduoduo (China’s top 5 richest is founder of this Chinese ecommerce phenom), previously or maybe still Flipkart, one of the big 3 Ecom in India, Didi, the Uber of China of which Uber merged and has a minority stake, Nio (China’s biggest electric car company for now), Meituan Dianping stake which itself could eclipse a $100B market cap, Vipshop another Chinese company. Don’t forget 5% of Reddit though that’s not worth even half a billion
    - M2Ys4U 5y ago
      I guess it depends on how much is owned. A percent or two would be very different to 30-40% (which would probably be a controlling interest).
  - biztos 5y ago
    It totally blew my mind a few years ago to discover that this is also common in the bar & restaurant world.
jacobajit 5y ago
Naspers' market cap is 98B, yet they own 31% of Tencent which is worth 775B - am I missing something? I'm aware of conglomerate discounts but I suspect there's something else going on here.
- MangoCoffee 5y ago
  >In 2001, Naspers made an early, successful investment of US$32 million, in Tencent. As of 2018, Naspers had approximately a 31 percent stake in Tencent, becoming its largest shareholder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naspers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naspers its probably because of their early investment in Tencent.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    The issue OP is bringing up is how their market cap is so small. 18% of $775B is more than $100B. It also means everything else they own is worth negative technically.
- adrianb 5y ago
  The same was true of Yahoo in its last days as an independent company. Their holdings in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan (an independent, successful company) were worth more than Yahoo's market cap. Selling Yahoo to Verizon meant splitting the web properties out from the company, leaving it as a shell for its holdings.
- xkjkls 5y ago
  Most of what I read previously about this has to do with a lot of uncertainty about how the Nasper's stake in Tencent will eventually be taxed or how the value will be extracted, and a lot of uncertainty about South African business in general. Note that Prosus, which is a subsidiary almost completely owned by Nasper (they have a small amount of public float), is worth close to $180 billion, which is much closer to the Tencent holding value. This reflects that people are much more confident of Dutch business than of South African business, and there probably is every right to be.
  - 5y ago

I hadn't heard of Prosus or Naspers before this. Apparently Naspers owns 31.2% of Tencent. Time to revisit my assumptions with respect to how companies are owned.

est 5y ago

Reminds me of "Tencent owns reddit" threads on reddit then someone points out that Naspers owns Tencent. Hilarity ensures.

ak217 5y ago
Tencent also owns almost half of Epic.
jedberg 5y ago
Which was extra funny given Tencent's tiny ownership share in reddit.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  In the business world it doesn't take much to exert a big influence on a company.

tpmx 5y ago

Indeed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naspers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naspers is a fascinating read.

aixi 5y ago

>Time to revisit my assumptions with respect to how companies are owned. And what would those be? I'm curious

skinnymuch 5y ago
Possibly how weird it is to think of the ownership of ownerships and stakes. Nested Say there is a large [activist] investor -> who owns 5% of Naspers -> which has a sizeable stake in Prosus -> which has a sizeable stake in Tencent -> which has a sizeable stake in Epic Games (40%+) OR a majority stake in Tencent Music -> which has a respectable stake in Spotify (7.5%). Not to mention Tencent’s own stake in Spotify (1-3%)
- moonchild 5y ago
  Is it advantageous for a company to own some of its competitor's stock? Does it represent a conflict of interest?
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    Spotify and Tencent Music swapped shares when they did a deal together. There is some hand wringing with all the gaming companies Tencent owns or has a stake in. They own Supercell which was worth $10B+ before. League of Legends parent Riot. A stake in Kakao Daum that does gaming stuff too. On top of the 40% of Fortnite parent Epic Games, they own 10 or 15% of PUBG parent Bluehole. They own 5%+ stakes in Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard (which owns Candy Crush parent King Games). They are a huge game publisher in China and okay in rest of Asia. So they get to publish a lot of games like WoW in China. They own a handful of smaller studios and a stake in probably a dozen other gaming studios at minimum. Usually when I say studios I mean outside China too. Miniclip and Agar.io might be familiar to people. 20% of Glu Mobile too which makes a lot of the branded kitsch apps for Kardashians etc. they just got bought so not sure if ownership remains. Tencent is the closest successor to Berkshire Hathaway. Their other minority stakes are wild too. Minority stakes each worth billions include JD.com(Amazon of China), Kakao Daum as mentioned, Snap[chat], Tesla, Pinduoduo (China’s top 5 richest is founder of this Chinese ecommerce phenom), previously or maybe still Flipkart, one of the big 3 Ecom in India, Didi, the Uber of China of which Uber merged and has a minority stake, Nio (China’s biggest electric car company for now), Meituan Dianping stake which itself could eclipse a $100B market cap, Vipshop another Chinese company. Don’t forget 5% of Reddit though that’s not worth even half a billion
  - M2Ys4U 5y ago
    I guess it depends on how much is owned. A percent or two would be very different to 30-40% (which would probably be a controlling interest).
- biztos 5y ago
  It totally blew my mind a few years ago to discover that this is also common in the bar & restaurant world.

jacobajit 5y ago

Naspers' market cap is 98B, yet they own 31% of Tencent which is worth 775B - am I missing something? I'm aware of conglomerate discounts but I suspect there's something else going on here.

MangoCoffee 5y ago
>In 2001, Naspers made an early, successful investment of US$32 million, in Tencent. As of 2018, Naspers had approximately a 31 percent stake in Tencent, becoming its largest shareholder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naspers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naspers its probably because of their early investment in Tencent.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  The issue OP is bringing up is how their market cap is so small. 18% of $775B is more than $100B. It also means everything else they own is worth negative technically.
adrianb 5y ago
The same was true of Yahoo in its last days as an independent company. Their holdings in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan (an independent, successful company) were worth more than Yahoo's market cap. Selling Yahoo to Verizon meant splitting the web properties out from the company, leaving it as a shell for its holdings.
xkjkls 5y ago
Most of what I read previously about this has to do with a lot of uncertainty about how the Nasper's stake in Tencent will eventually be taxed or how the value will be extracted, and a lot of uncertainty about South African business in general. Note that Prosus, which is a subsidiary almost completely owned by Nasper (they have a small amount of public float), is worth close to $180 billion, which is much closer to the Tencent holding value. This reflects that people are much more confident of Dutch business than of South African business, and there probably is every right to be.
- 5y ago