In business and poker, it's important to know, in equal parts, when to hold them and also when to fold them. And it looks like Naspers, one of the leading media outlets on the African continent, is taking the latter route with one if its European eCommerce properties.
Bloomberg is reporting that Naspers is shopping around Allegro, an online marketplace and eBay-like competitor based in Poland. As one of the most highly used eCommerce sites in Eastern Europe with 14 million monthly users, Naspers could fetch a fair price in a win-win situation that saw its own shares rise 1.3 percent after the announcement was made on Thursday (June 9).
The move comes a few short months after Naspers spokeswoman Meloy Horn responded to a Reuters report to an imminent sale of the company's Allegro property with an emphatic no.
"Allegro is a strong-performing, profitable eCommerce business, and we have no plans to sell it," Horn said in January.
Come June, however, and Horn sang a very different tune to Bloomberg when rumors of Allegro's imminent sale popped up for a second time.
“It is our company policy to neither acknowledge or deny our involvement in any merger, acquisition or divestiture activity, nor to comment on market rumors,” Horn said in an email.
Oh, Naspers — doth neither confirm nor deny too much.
