GOVERNANCE WATCH
By InsidEntity Editorial Desk · Sep 24, 2026 · 9 min read
Series 3 | 23 September 2026
One ordinary-looking number, taken apart until the number that matters is on the table.
US$11.6bn in earnings. US$253m without Tencent’s dividend.
Naspers reported US$11.6bn in profit from continuing operations for the year to 31 March 2026. The overwhelming majority of it did not come from the businesses the group consolidates. It came from equity-accounted results, disposals and other portfolio items, with Tencent at the centre of the investment-related earnings and the disposal gains.
Underneath sits a much smaller figure: US$253m of free cash flow excluding Tencent’s dividend.
That number matters because FY2026 was also the year Naspers began describing itself as an operator rather than an investor. Ecosystem aEBIT rose 95% to US$923m, and group consolidated aEBIT reached US$583m.
Four numbers, one group, and a different picture from each. The US$11.6bn is what appeared in the income statement. The US$923m is what the operating ecosystems earned on management’s adjusted measure. The US$583m is the aEBIT left after media and corporate costs. The US$253m is what was left in cash once Tencent’s dividend is set aside.
The number
US$11.6bn. Profit from continuing operations for FY2026, the year from April 2025 to March 2026. The financial statements were audited by Deloitte & Touche, whose report is dated 27 June 2026, and the results were published on 29 June. The figure is down from US$12.4bn, a fall of about 6%, which the group attributes to selling fewer Tencent shares than in the prior year.
The number is not Naspers shareholders’ alone. Of the US$11,573m profit for the year, US$5.0bn is attributable to Naspers equity holders and US$6.6bn to non-controlling interests, mainly Prosus’s outside shareholders.
The question
How much of it came from running businesses?
For two decades the answer has been “not much”, and the market has priced Naspers as a Tencent proxy. In FY2026 management says that is changing. The statements let the claim be tested at three levels: profit, operating earnings and cash.
Number 1: US$12.3bn from investments and portfolio items, against US$611m elsewhere
| FY2026 income statement line | US$m |
|---|---|
| Operating loss, the consolidated businesses | (217) |
| Net interest, income 662 against expense 685 | (23) |
| Other finance costs, mainly foreign exchange on euro bonds | (371) |
| Operating and financing, subtotal | (611) |
| Share of equity-accounted results, mainly Tencent | 6,872 |
| Gains on partial disposal of associates, Tencent US$4.7bn | 4,858 |
| Net gains on acquisitions and disposals | 647 |
| Impairment and dilution on associates, net | (62) |
| Investment and portfolio items, subtotal | 12,315 |
| Profit before tax | 11,704 |
| Tax | (120) |
| Profit from continuing operations | 11,584 |
The contrast is the point. Investment and portfolio items contributed US$12.3bn. The consolidated businesses and the financing lines together subtracted US$611m. The difference is the US$11.7bn of profit before tax.
The operating loss is not a sign the businesses are failing. It is driven by US$482m of impairments of goodwill and other assets, mainly Stack Overflow and GoodHabitz, which management says generative AI has disrupted, and by amortisation on the year’s acquisitions. Strip those out and the picture improves, which is Number 2. But on the audited line, the part of Naspers that runs businesses lost money.
The Tencent gain is shrinking by design. The group trimmed its Tencent position by a net 0.9% during the year to fund the Prosus buyback, leaving it at 22.66% at year-end, and the gain fell to US$4.7bn from US$6.0bn.
Number 2: US$583m against US$8.1bn
On management’s own adjusted measures, the businesses Naspers consolidates produced aEBIT of US$583m after media and corporate costs. Tencent contributed US$8,117m to core headline earnings. That is roughly 14 to 1.
These are not like-for-like measures. Tencent’s US$8.1bn is its gross contribution to core headline earnings, after Tencent’s own tax and before the deductions that bring the figure down to what reaches Naspers. The US$583m is consolidated aEBIT, before interest and tax. The ratio is directional, not an earnings comparison. Naspers’s own attributable core headline earnings for the year were US$3,570m, up 14%.
The scale difference is still the story, and so is the direction of travel. Ecosystem aEBIT rose 95% to US$923m, or 61% in local currency excluding acquisitions. Head office and media costs bring it down to US$583m.
| Business | FY2026 aEBIT, US$m |
|---|---|
| OLX, classifieds, Europe | 427 |
| iFood, food delivery and fintech, Brazil | 358 |
| Despegar, travel, Latin America, from May 2025 | 84 |
| iyzico, payments, Turkiye | 20 |
| eMAG, etail, Romania | 18 |
| Other, including Takealot at 11 | 18 |
| Just Eat Takeaway, food delivery, Europe, from October 2025 | 8 |
| PayU India | (10) |
| Total ecosystem | 923 |
| Media | (19) |
| Corporate segment | (321) |
| Group consolidated aEBIT | 583 |
One layer further down, OLX and iFood together produced US$785m, or 85% of ecosystem aEBIT. And iFood has told the market its FY2027 aEBITDA will fall to between US$100m and US$150m, from US$400m in FY2026, on an aEBITDA basis rather than the aEBIT shown above, as it invests to defend its market against new entrants.
The number underneath the operating number is two businesses, and one of them has already said it will earn less next year.
Number 3: US$253m
Free cash flow was a record US$1,490m, up from US$968m. Tencent’s dividend supplied US$1.2bn of it. Excluding that dividend, free cash flow was US$253m, against an outflow of US$33m in FY2025.
That swing of US$286m is the cleanest evidence the turnaround has reached cash. For scale, US$253m is about 2% of the US$11.6bn reported profit. The two are not accounting equivalents, free cash flow and IFRS profit measure different things, but the comparison shows how far apart the headline and the cash sit.
The cash flow statement also shows who funds the strategy. The group spent US$7.1bn net on acquiring subsidiaries and businesses during the year, in a period whose acquisitions were Just Eat Takeaway, Despegar and La Centrale, and paid US$3.0bn to repurchase its own shares. Partial disposals of associates, mainly Tencent, brought in US$6.9bn. A further Tencent dividend of US$1.4bn arrived in June 2026, after year-end.
Tencent’s dividend supplied about four-fifths of the year’s free cash flow, and disposals of the stake brought in about two-thirds of the US$10.1bn the group spent on acquisitions and buybacks combined.
The InsidEntity takeaway
The headline says US$11.6bn. The number underneath says US$253m. Both are accurate.
Naspers’s claim to be an operator rather than an investor is true in direction and early in scale. Its consolidated businesses now make money on an adjusted basis and produce cash, and that is new.
But the scale is still very different. Tencent sits at the centre of the equity-accounted result and the disposal gain that together make up most of the US$12.3bn. Its contribution to core headline earnings was roughly fourteen times consolidated aEBIT, on measures that are not directly comparable. Its dividend supplied about four-fifths of the free cash flow, and sales of the stake funded about two-thirds of what the group spent on acquisitions and buybacks.
The number to watch next is not US$11.6bn. It is whether US$253m keeps growing while iFood spends and Just Eat Takeaway is rebuilt.
The InsidEntity record
| Instrument | Score |
|---|---|
| Company Risk Rating | 4.67, Excellent |
| Director Independence | 5.00 |
| Director Capacity | 3.66 |
| Auditor Independence | 5.00 |
| Shareholder Influence | 5.00 |
| Financial Stability Rating | 4.7, audited years FY2023 to FY2025 |
Auditor Independence reads 5.00 because Deloitte & Touche has audited Naspers for three years, which sits in the top band of the tenure clock. The FY2026 statements say so directly. The firm that preceded it, PwC, had audited Naspers for 108 years.
Independent research. Not financial advice. No allegation of wrongdoing is made against any individual or entity named.
Know more. Risk less. Decide better.
Sources: Naspers Limited, annual financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2026, including the directors’ report, financial review and share capital note; Naspers summary consolidated financial statements FY2026, for the income statement, cash flow statement, segmental aEBIT and revenue, and the core headline earnings reconciliation; Naspers short-form announcement and media release, 29 June 2026; Naspers FY2026 results presentation.
Note on figures: The Financial Stability Rating of 4.7 is scored on the three audited years to FY2025 and does not yet reflect the FY2026 audited statements published on 29 June 2026, which are the subject of this article. The Company Risk Rating of 4.67 is the average of the four pillar scores shown. All other figures are Naspers’s, on a Naspers reporting basis. Prosus reports separately and several of its equivalents differ, including ecosystem aEBIT, consolidated aEBIT and ecosystem revenue, so figures carried in shared presentation material should not be read across. The US$5.0bn and US$6.6bn attribution split is of profit for the year of US$11,573m, which differs from profit from continuing operations of US$11,584m by an US$11m loss from discontinued operations; the statements do not publish a continuing-operations attribution. The US$482m impairment relates to goodwill and other assets and sits within the operating loss; a further US$66m impairment of equity-accounted investments sits below that line and within the net US$62m shown. The iFood guidance is on an aEBITDA basis and is not directly comparable to the aEBIT figures in the segmental table. Percentages and subtotals not printed in the statements are this publication’s arithmetic on the lines shown.
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