Bekker's foresight is paying off

On Friday, Naspers' price on the JSE went through the roof, rising nearly 9%, a staggering gain, particularly for a large capitalised share.

The move made Naspers the fifth most valuable business on the JSE, after British American Tobacco, SAB Miller, Glencore and BHP Billiton.

The media company's market capitalisation now exceeds other local listed giants like Richemont and MTN, underscoring the brilliance and foresight of the group's guiding force, Koos Bekker, who has transformed the 100-year-old publisher of newspapers and magazines into a prominent international digital-media operation.

What was equally impressive was that trade in Naspers' shares on Friday exceeded R6-billion, over a third of the JSE's turnover, with most of the demand originating offshore.

Naspers' shining success further highlights the increasing gap between those businesses listed on the JSE with largely foreign interests and those that lean heavily on the local economy for growth. Naspers' value, driven primarily by its investment in Chinese internet business Tencent, overshadows the combined worth of all the platinum and gold companies quoted on our local market.

Friday's rush for shares was motivated by three events: a positive interim trading update and announcements that Naspers had entered e-commerce tie-ups with establishments in Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh and that Tencent had agreed a music streaming venture with Warner Music.

Though Naspers has a wide range of global operations, stretching from pay television to internet services to print media, it's the 34% investment in Tencent that is attracting the investment world's attention; accounting for most of the share's underlying value.

Naspers acquired a 50% holding in Tencent in 2001, long before investors cared to calibrate the possible clout of the Chinese middle-class consumer, a stake that has been watered down to 34% following the company's Hong Kong listing in 2004 and subsequent share issues. With 850million instant messaging accounts, Tencent easily ranks with Google, Amazon, eBay and Facebook as one of the world's largest internet companies.

It's a dynamic organisation that pursues new avenues of revenues in mobile applications, payment services, gaming, advertising, search and e-commerce.

Tencent's global position has been enriched by the recent listing of Chinese e-commerce portal Alibaba on the New York Stock Exchange, the biggest initial public offering in US stock market history. The company's debut on Wall Street woke the investment world to the reach of internet commerce in China and the muscle power of the young consumer on the sub-continent, numbers that overwhelmed similar industries in the US and Europe.

On Tuesday last week, Alibaba stunned global retailers by recording over $9-billion worth of transactions on its internet platforms on what is now recognised as the largest online shopping extravaganza in the world, Singles' Day. The levels of trade on this self-proclaimed shopping holiday far surpass the heavy spree in the US that follows Thanksgiving in the final week of November.

Singles' Day, celebrated by young Chinese on November 11 because of the connection between being single and the string of "1s" in the date, has transmuted from a day of parties and gatherings into a time when fashionable youths spend lavishly online in an endeavour to attract partners.

Retailers, restaurants and other consumer-related enterprises respond by offering bargains to these young spenders.

Though South African investors holding Naspers shares continue to celebrate the genius of Bekker, spare a thought for our poor singles shoppers, whose internet gifts are piling up and gathering dust in some dingy back room at the Post Office, killing off any chance these lonesome souls might have of finding a suitable lover.