Prosus exec sells R380 million worth of shares

An independent non-executive director at Prosus recently sold 500,000 of the company’s shares at an estimated value of R380.19 million.

The company informed shareholders after market close on Tuesday, 11 February, that Prosus exec Steve Pacak sold thousands of the company’s ordinary shares the previous day.

On Monday, 10 February, Pacak sold 350,000 Prosus shares at an average volume-weighted value of €39.75 (R760.70) per share.

On the same day, he sold another 150,000 shares at an average price of €39.66 (R759.05) per share.

At market close on Monday, 10 February, Prosus’ share price was R757.49.

In total, this amounts to 500,000 shares sold for an approximate value of €19.86 million or R380.19 million.

The company explained that Pacak – in his own capacity – and the trustees of the family trust acquired Prosus shares as a consequence of owning Naspers N ordinary shares during the Prosus’ listing in September 2019.

Pacak is an independent non-executive director at Prosus. He began his career with Naspers at M-Net in 1988 and has held various executive positions in the Naspers group. 

He is also a director at MultiChoice and Naspers companies. He was appointed as an executive director of Naspers in 1998 and a non-executive director on the Naspers board on 15 January 2015. 

He retired as Naspers’ financial director on 30 June 2014 and remained a non-executive director on the company’s board. 

He is a qualified South African chartered accountant with a BAcc from the University of the Witwatersrand.

Pacak’s sales came just a few weeks after Prosus CEO Fabricio Bloisi announced that the technology giant has close to $20 billion (around R371 billion) to spend and is ready to grow in Europe. 

Naspers and Prosus already hold significant stakes in European companies, including Germany’s Delivery Hero.

Most of Prosus’ deals in recent months have been in historically higher-growth markets, such as an initial public offering in India and a $1.7 billion deal for a travel agency in Brazil. 

“We need to invest substantially more here to put Europe in this race and not to keep looking for an outsider,” Bloisi told Bloomberg TV.

“Our ecosystem in Europe is ready to grow, and we are ready to invest.”

He said that Prosus was ready to invest closer to home and called US President Donald Trump’s move to make America a superpower in artificial intelligence a “wake-up call” for Europe. 

“In Davos last year, the big thing was, ‘How we can avoid moving too fast on AI?’” he said. 

“The Trump administration has moved the narrative to, ‘We are going to move faster than anyone else’.”

Bloisi said that Prosus is also interested in seeking partners in the infrastructure around European AI. 

Prosus, through Naspers, made a blockbuster investment in Chinese game maker Tencent in 2001, when it paid $34 million for a 50% stake. 

Today, it owns about a quarter of the company, which has a total market value of about $450 billion. 

“Prosus’s play is not China. Prosus’s play is a shareholder of a Chinese company. But where we invest and where we want to grow is in Europe, India, Latin America, Africa, and that’s where we are investing,” he said.