JSE traders to puzzle over Naspers results

The JSE’s largest company, Naspers, is scheduled to release its 2018 financial year results on Friday.

Judging from last year, Naspers will probably release its results at about 3pm.

The internet group’s figures will be trickier than usual to decipher because it has restated its 2017 results after deciding to change its accounting policies.

Naspers said that under its new accounting rules, the headline earnings per share (HEPS) it reported in 2017 would fall to $0.44 from the originally reported $1.79.

The change is due to its decision to make the share payments promised to owners of businesses it acquired and others by acquiring existing shares instead of issuing new shares, Naspers said in a trading statement on June 13.

Under its old accounting rules, its HEPS would more than double, whereas under its new rules, HEPS growth will jump by as much as 850%, the trading statement said.

Naspers said its “core” HEPS would grow by up to 45%.

Naspers’s 31%-owned Chinese associate Tencent was down 0.55% to HK$394.60, contributing a 0.27% decline to Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index in what looks to be another gloomy day for world stock markets.

Satrix reported the changes to the weightings for the coming September quarter of the indices it tracks with its exchange-tracking funds (ETFs) on Thursday.

A decline of about 3% in Naspers’s share price over the past three months has seen its slice of the top 40 shrink to 22.45% from 23.37%.

Tied in second place are BHP and Richemont which each have a 10.16% weighting.

Under the June quarter weightings, Richemont was the top 40’s second-largest constituent with an 8.78% weighting, followed by BHP with 8.04%.

New entrants to the top 40 are Clicks and Netcare, while Imperial, Reinet and Steinhoff have fallen out.

Clicks’s rally over the June quarter has seen it enter the top 40 in 28th position with a 0.8% weighting, while Netcare has taken the 34th rank with a weighting of 0.69%.

The rand was trading at R13.57 to the dollar, R15.75 to the euro, and R17.99 to the pound at 6.30am, little changed from Thursday’s levels.