Prosus Continues to Reduce Its Stake in Tencent
On April 12th, Prosus, a major shareholder of Tencent, announced that as part of its ongoing share buyback plan, it will deposit 96 million Tencent shares it holds into the Hong Kong Central Clearing and Settlement System (CCASS) in certificate form this week to enable these shares to be traded orderly on the market.
This means that Prosus will continue to sell Tencent shares to raise funds for the buyback of its own company’s stock.
Prosus recently announced an update to the open share buyback plan for the ordinary shares N in Prosus Capital and Naspers Capital, which was previously announced on June 27, 2022.
As part of the buyback plan, between April 3 and April 6, 2023, Prosus repurchased a total of 1.7834 million shares of Prosus stock at an average price of €71.1390 per share for a total cost of €126.9 million ($138.6 million).
On June 27, 2022, Tencent Holdings announced that its major shareholder Naspers Group will sell the company’s shares to raise funds for its buyback plan.
SEE ALSO: Prosus Denies Report of Talks to Sell Controlling Stake in Tencent to CITIC
Therefore, in order to cope with the downward pressure on stock prices caused by continuous reduction of major shareholders, Tencent implemented a buyback program for 104 trading days in 2022, repurchasing a total of 107.083 million shares and accumulating a total buyback amount of HKD 33.787 billion.
As of March 31st, Tencent has implemented a total of 16 repurchase days this year, with a repurchased stock quantity of 12,473,100 shares and an investment of HKD 4.629 billion. The average repurchase price is HKD 371 per share, and the average daily expenditure is approximately HKD 289 million.
