According to Hong Kong's CCASS (Central Clearing and Settlement System) data, on October 19, Tencent's CCASS changed, and Goldman Sachs' holdings surged by more than 95 million shares to 500 million shares in a single day, accounting for 4.26% of the issued shares, a sharp increase of 1 percentage point to 5.26%. and reduced its holdings by 786,000 shares, 63,800 shares and 1,264,000 shares in the three trading days from October 20 to October 25, respectively.
According to market analysts, only Tencent's South African major shareholder Naspers and its subsidiary Prosus are currently capable of carrying out such a large-scale transfer.
Goldman Sachs, as the exclusive brokerage company for Naspers and Prosus to reduce their holdings in Tencent, has also made the market pay special attention to its potential shareholding reduction plan. On April 11 this year, when Prosus announced that it would reduce its stake in Tencent, the number of transferred positions was also 96 million shares.
In addition, according to a July 17 report by the Wall Street Journal, Prosus, the majority shareholder of Tencent Holdings and the Dutch subsidiary of South Africa's Naspers Group, expects its stake in Tencent to decrease by 2 to 3 percentage points per year, to about 24%-25% by the end of this year.
According to the data, in June 2022, when Prosus announced that it would sell Tencent shares to fund the buyback, it also held about 29% of Tencent's shares.
According to the latest data from Prosus' official website, as of October 27, 2023, the company still holds 2.4 billion Tencent shares, worth about $89.9 billion, accounting for about 25.2% of the current total share capital.
This means that according to Prosus's plan, it may also reduce its holdings of up to more than 100 million Tencent shares during the year, worth nearly HK$30 billion based on Tencent's average price in the past 20 days.
It is worth noting that this figure also coincides with the latest batch of 96 million shares.
In 2001, Naspers acquired a 46.5% stake in Tencent for US$33 million, and since then the proportion has decreased due to factors such as equity issuance, but it is still the largest shareholder of Tencent.
On June 16, 2004, Tencent was officially listed, opening at HK$4.375 on the same day, 18.24% higher than the issue price.
Based on Tencent's market capitalization of $949 billion in 2021, Naspers' investment has grown to more than $280 billion, with a floating profit of 8,750 times, which can be called the world's first stock god who crushed Warren Buffett. Since then, Naspers has not made such an impressive investment as Tencent, and its own business development has not improved, so its share price has been below the value of its Tencent stake for a long time.
Four years ago, dissatisfied with its valuation, Naspers began spinning off its business and listing its Internet business (Prosus), which includes stakes in Tencent and other emerging market technology companies, on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, now worth about $72 billion.
Since then, Naspers has gradually reduced its stake in Tencent and used the proceeds to buy back Prosus shares to boost its valuation.
(Source: Finance Associated Press, Securities Times)