Today I read an interesting article about Telkom buying MWEB Africa as well as a 75% stake in MWEB Namibia for the substantial amount of R601m!
MWEB Africa was owned by Naspers and these shareholdings will be acquired from Multichoice Africa Limited and MIH Holdings Limited respectively.
What interests me most is that companies such as Naspers and the AVUSA Group are very involved in local Internet startups and have invested millions of rands in various projects, so why would they be selling such a powerful infrastructure, which could be used to power these startups? Has Naspers invested too much money in local Internet startups and now needs the cash injection?
Alternatively, MIH SWAT (site) forms the think tank and execution arm of the the Internet division within Naspers and is working on International projects in places such as Brazil in South America. Perhaps Naspers has realised that investing money locally into development is not the way to go, but rather fuel International trends with their new cash injection?
I’m not an expert on this at all, but I found the article extremely interesting and wanted to do a little digging out of interest.
Good news for me; my share value has just gone up :))
Money, money, money – come my way! xD
My take on that sale is the following: The new generation cell phones are so capable, that they’ll become the tool of first-choice for many in South Africa and Africa to surf the internet.
That means, in future internet connectivity will (mostly) be sold by MTN and Vodacom – not MWeb and the other ISP’s…
So, technology has made MWeb redundant (or at least robbed it of its growth trend).
Bye from Germany
They’re not going to get very far – here’s my post on why.
If they somehow do a 180 and roll out 10mbps uncapped lines, I’ll reconsider that statement :)
~ Wogan
@Fe – Well, after spending R600+ million, your shares would go down initially and then hopefully return to stable and then move upwards should the investment be a good one. I’ll hold thumbs!
@James – ROFL!
@Christo – Not a bad point at all mate, thanks for coming in and chatting.
@Wogan – Haha, I’ll pop on over and take a read shortly.
Haha I said that as I also have shares in Telkom. Wogan is right. They are rolling out24Mbit by the end of next year apparently, but bandwidth will still be extremely expensive, so 4Mbit is fine for me :) O and Telkom share holders shares are being transfered to Vodacom, and that share will go up nicely :) especially with 13.9% increased profit from last year :)