Denis Opudo
Walmart Inc is one of the largest retailer companies in the world. The company is finalizing the deal of buying 77% stakes of Flipkart, an e-commerce company in India. The deal will be worth $16 billion but will not take the entire ownership of the Flipkart. Naspers bought Flipkart in 2012 at a stake value of $2.2 billion. According to the founder of Herenya Capital Advisors, Petri Redelinghuys, Flipkart can enable Naspers to make more money. However, the influence of the US giant company (Walmart) will make its influence to drop by a large margin.
Bob Van Dijk, the Chief Executive Officer, noted that investors value Naspers as a whole but leave out its Tencent stakes. He vowed to change the company valuation strategy by closing that gap. Besides, he said that their plan was to be a strategic investor instead of a financial investor. Naspers shares last Thursday traded at 2.9% valuing the company at $112 billion. He also said that their focus is to attract more consumers and entrepreneurs. This will help in bridging the gap left by Flipkart. He concluded that Naspers still retains businesses in India. Some of them comprise of MakeMyTrip, Swiggy, and OLX.
Naspers obtained $1.6 billion profit after selling 11% of its stakes in Flipkart. A similar lucrative profit was received in 2016 when Naspers sold Allegro platform. The profit helped the company to convince its shareholders about the future progress. Seventeen years ago, Naspers bought the Tencent Holdings Ltd at $32 million. The current worth of this long-term investment adds up to $150 billion. The company also sold some of its internet shares at $10 billion in one and half months ago.
