Naspers was the first African business to exceed a $100 billion market capitalization.
South Africa-based Naspers crossed the $100 billion market-value threshold in 2018, largely because of the enormous value investors assigned to its stake in Tencent. Naspers had invested in the Chinese internet company early, and that investment eventually became worth far more than Naspers’ traditional media businesses.
The milestone also highlighted a persistent “holding-company discount.” Naspers’ total market capitalization was often lower than the market value of its Tencent shares alone, because investors applied a discount to the parent company’s structure and other assets.
Naspers began as a newspaper publisher in 1915 and later became an international technology investor. In 2019 it spun out part of its international internet assets as Prosus, which holds a large Tencent stake. The African-company record is therefore tied to investment ownership as much as operating revenue.