Naspers invests $1.16B in Avito, Russia's top classifieds site, taking its ownership to over 99% and valuing the company at $3.85B
Context & Ripple Effects
Naspers first bought a majority of Avito in a $1.2 billion deal in 2015, and this $1.16B follow-on takes it past 99% ownership at a $3.85B valuation — roughly tripling the price per the earlier entry point. The buyout lands just weeks before Naspers announced plans to spin off its internet holdings, including the Tencent stake and Mail.ru, into a Dutch listing, so it arrives with a wholly-owned Russian classifieds asset cleaned up for that structure.
The fuller arc matters for reading it: Naspers had already shown willingness to monetize Eastern European marketplaces by selling Allegro for $3.25B in 2016, and three years after this buyout Prosus was forced to sell Avito to Kismet Capital for ~$2.46B during its Russia exit — well below the ~$6B analysts had assigned it before the invasion.
First-order effects
- Minority shareholders in Avito are bought out entirely, leaving Naspers with effectively sole ownership of Russia's leading classifieds site at a $3.85B mark-up on its 2015 entry.
Second-order effects
- A fully-owned Avito becomes a cleaner asset for the Dutch-listed internet vehicle Naspers was assembling around its Tencent stake and Mail.ru holding, consolidating its emerging-markets classifieds exposure alongside the Allegro proceeds already banked.
Third-order effects
- The pattern that follows — a forced sale to Kismet Capital at ~$2.46B versus a pre-war ~$6B analyst valuation — shows how geopolitical shocks can erase most of a decade of compounding in a single exit, pricing country risk into every cross-border platform bet.
The trend: Global internet holding companies like Naspers and Prosus concentrated their bets on emerging-market classifieds platforms through the 2010s, only to unwind them wholesale when geopolitics forced exits.