South African billionaire Koos Bekker loses $800 million as Naspers, Prosus fall

South African billionaire Koos Bekker, the chairman of Naspers and Prosus, has lost about $800 million this year as shares of the two technology investment companies have fallen.

His net worth has dropped to about $3.2 billion from $4 billion on Jan. 14, according to Forbes. Both Naspers, which is listed in Johannesburg, and Prosus, its Amsterdam-listed international arm, have fallen more than 35% since the start of the year.

Bekker, 73, owns 0.93% of Naspers and 0.76% of Prosus. Those holdings make up most of his fortune, which leaves it closely tied to how the two stocks perform.

Tencent at the center

The value of both companies rests largely on their stake in Tencent, the Chinese technology group behind WeChat and some of the world's biggest video games. Naspers owns more than half of Prosus, which in turn holds 24.6% of Tencent, a stake worth about $121 billion.

The investment dates back to 2001, when Naspers, then mainly a South African newspaper and pay-television company, paid about $32 million for a large stake in the young Chinese internet firm. It became one of the most profitable venture bets in history and turned Naspers into Africa's most valuable company.

Concerns about artificial intelligence spending have weighed on Tencent this year. Doubts about whether large technology companies can earn back what they are spending on AI spread from the United States to China, hitting Tencent and, through it, Naspers and Prosus, according to ITWeb. By April, Naspers was already down 20% for the year and Prosus nearly 24%.

Peter Takaendesa, chief investment officer at Mergence Investment Managers, said in April that Tencent was trading at the low end of its valuation range even though it held more cash than debt and was buying back its own shares. He said Naspers was trading at a 35% to 45% discount to the value of its assets.

The man who made the Tencent bet

Bekker built his fortune running Naspers. He was chief executive from 1997 to 2014, the period in which the company made the Tencent investment and transformed itself from a traditional media group into a global internet investor. He later returned as chairman of both Naspers and Prosus. He serves as a non-independent, nonexecutive chair.

Before running Naspers, he founded M-Net, the South African pay-television company, and helped launch the mobile operator MTN.

A hotel and wine business on three continents

Outside of Naspers, Bekker and his wife, Karen Roos, have built a portfolio of luxury farms and hotels. It includes Babylonstoren, a working farm, garden and hotel in South Africa's Cape Winelands, The Newt in Somerset, England, and Vignamaggio, a historic wine estate near Florence in Italy.

In early 2024, the couple added Blou, a coastal retreat near Plettenberg Bay on South Africa's Garden Route.

Those properties are privately held and are not reflected in daily market swings. Most of Bekker's fortune still rides on Naspers and Prosus, and whether he recovers this year's losses will depend largely on Tencent's share price.