To The Moon

BEIJING, September 8  (TMTPOST)— Tencent’s largest shareholder seems to accelerate its trimming stakes in the Chinese tech giant.

Source: Visual China

Prosus NV, a Dutch technology investment company, sold 1,115,000 ordinary shares of Tencent, bringing its total ownership in the WeChat owner down to 27.99%, according to a statement Thursday. The sales came after US$7.6 billion worth of Tencent stakes entered in the Central Clearing And Settlement System (CCASS) of Hong Kong, spurring speculation about further offloading from South African internet and multimedia company Naspers, the major shareholder holding Tencent via its unit Prosus.

The recent stake cut was made to fund buyback, and as part of ongoing implementation of the repurchase program, Prosus said it has taken the administrative step to deposit an additional 192 million of Tencent shares to CCASS.

Naspers and Prosus announced on June 27 that they were going to sell Tencent shares orderly to fund a long-term open-ended share repurchase program, which would run as long as elevated levels of the trading discount to their underlying net asset value persist. But both of these companies said their boards had great confidence in Tencent’s long-term prospects.

As of late June, Naspers held 28.74% stake in Tencent through Prosus, suggesting the largest shareholder of Tencent has reduced more than 3.9 million shares worth of HK$1.55 billion in the first half of the year, Hong Kong Economic Times, the local paper cited recent filling last week.  

Naspers' move came as legendary investor Warren Buffett started his first stake reduction of BYD, the biggest electric vehicle maker in China. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway sold 1.33 million shares on August 24, which was the investor’s first position change since he built the position through acquiring 225 million BYD shares in September, 2008. Days after the sale, Berkshire cut its stake from 19.92% to 18.87% by offloading 1.716 million BYD shares in the beginning of September.