- Naspers this week sold just under 190 million shares in Chinese company Tencent.
- The sale raised the equivalent of around R115 billion.
- Naspers plans to do boring stuff like invest the money in ecommerce. We drew up a list of more exciting things it could splurge on.
Naspers just saw a windfall the equivalent of more than R115 billion from the sale of a small part of its stake in the company that has been dubbed the Facebook of China: Tencent.
Read: Naspers is cashing in R125 billion of its Tencent shares – to spend on food delivery, fintech, and 'other exciting growth opportunities'
Business Insider South Africa took the liberty of doing the Naspers the favour of drawing up a list of five things the company could do to spend the money.
Organise a company-wide retreat – in space.
At only R2.4 million per person, Naspers could fly about 25,000 of its employees to space for Easter. And then again on Christmas.
(The fact that Business Insider South Africa operates as a unit of Naspers subsidiary Media24 played no role in this calculation.)
Sponsor the Naspers Premier Football League
Naspers could not only sponsor the English premier league for R2 billion a year (Barclay's last paid sponsorship fee), but go as further as purchasing four of the league's top football clubs:
Premier League sponsorship, R2 billion
Manchester United, R43.4 billion
Manchester City, R23.9 billion
Arsenal, R22.7 billion
Chelsea, R21.7 billion
Source: Forbes
Become a corporate nuclear power.
One warhead costs about R200 million. Naspers could build up a nuclear weapons cache of more than 500 missiles.
Build 1.15 million RDP houses.
The cost of a 50m² RDP house is about R2,000 per square metre according to construction company Aecom's latest property and construction cost guide for Africa. With the SA Institute of Race Relations placing SA’s housing backlog at around 2 million units, Naspers could more than halve that.
Buy – and then improve – the best corporate campus in the world.
What Apple and Naspers share in common (other than being in the top three largest companies by market capitalisation in their respective countries) is that both employ about 25,000 people each.
Naspers could easily afford to acquire Apple's new R60 billion 'ring' campus to move all its employees into and use the change to relocate all of them, re-brand, furnish and maintain it.
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