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P Pitch Archive Stock pitches across investing competitions
← Spring 2014

Naspers Limited

NPSNY pitch long/short Carter Roehl, George Taras, Luke Tashie

Thesis

Naspers is undervalued as the market is attributing a negative value to its unlisted assets while its publicly traded interests are worth significantly more than its market cap. The investment thesis suggests buying Naspers and shorting its publicly traded assets to exploit this mispricing, with a projected net return of 738%. The 'stub' representing Naspers' unlisted assets is estimated to be worth over $20 billion, indicating a substantial upside.

Did it work?

failed confidence: high

The thesis projected a 738% net return from the sum-of-the-parts discount, expecting the 'stub' mispricing to close in favor of the long Naspers position. Instead, over the ~12.3 years since the pitch, the price declined 76.3% — the opposite direction and magnitude of the projected outcome. With far more than any reasonable stated horizon having elapsed, the mispricing thesis was decisively not realized.