Prosus Half Year Revenues Up 32%

Group, which owns Imovirtual, Otodom, and Property24 and has interests in OLX Brazil and EMPG posts bumper results

Prosus, the division of the international assets of South African publishing giant Naspers, has today released its financial results for the six months ending September 30th. The report makes for pleasant shareholder reading with key figures including:

• Half-year revenue of $12.7 billion, representing an increase of 32%

• Trading profit grew by 43% to US$2.7bn (HY20: US$1.9bn)

• Free cash flow jumped from $14 million to $370 million

A quote from Group CEO Bob Van Dijk in today's press release admitted that the pandemic has indirectly benefitted Prosus’s business through “accelerated activity in the consumer internet space” and the internet giant’s results today reflect trends seen in recent financial results published by the likes of Scout24, Zillow and REA Group. Van Dijk’s quotes around his company’s trajectory over the course of the pandemic so far mirror those seen on the recent financial reports of fellow market leaders:

“We entered the pandemic with financial strength and good momentum and in the second half of the period, our businesses recovered well from the initial impact of Covid-19 and are now fundamentally stronger than they were going into the pandemic.”

While the performance of individual group classifieds brands was not specified on today’s announcement, from Prosus’s 2020 annual report released in July it would be reasonable to infer that the strong performance seen in its real estate classifieds ($227 million in July’s report representing 21% growth y-o-y) continued on a similar path through to the end of September.

While the company’s positive numbers are largely attributed to gains in ed-tech and food-tech, Prosus has been involved in some large and successful classifieds deals over the half-year period as well despite missing out on the coveted eBay Classifieds deal to Adevinta. In April Prosus owned OLX Group announced a landmark deal with EMPG in the Middle East and earlier this month tied up a deal in Brazil for Grupo ZAP property portals making it the outright leader in Brazilian property classifieds.

Full disclosure: The author owns Prosus stock.