BEIJING, December 8 (TMTPost) – Tencent’s major shareholder Prosus sold 513,500 Tencent ordinary shares on Thursday, reducing its ownership in Tencent to 24.99%.

Prosus is an investment subsidiary of South African multinational tech and media group Naspers, which invested in US$ 300 million in Tecent in 2001. Prosus has been a major shareholder of Tencent since 2019.

Tencent was trading at 306.2 Hong Kong dollars per share at noon, down by 0.52%.

Based on Tencent's closing price of HK$307.8 on Thursday, Prosus cashed in approximately HK$158 million through this divestment. According to the company’s official website, Prosus still held 2.3798 billion Tencent shares as of Thursday, down by 108.4 million shares compared to the number disclosed by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on April 25.

On June 27, 2022, Tencent's major shareholder Naspers broke its promise not to trim holdings within three years and announced the sale of a portion of its Tencent shares for cash. This was the third time Naspers sold Tencent shares. In the 2022 fiscal year, most of Naspers and Prosus's profits came from Tencent's dividends.

Driven by the economic recovery and tightened supervision in areas such as platform economy and gaming, Tencent's stock price has rebounded from its lows in late October 2022. Its current market value is close to 2.87 trillion yuan. The net asset value of Tencent held by Prosus is approximately $93.8 billion.

In the latest financial report released by Prosus on November 29, within the six months ending September 30, Prosus sold about 1% of Tencent shares for nearly $4 billion in proceeds. The cash will be used for repurchasing Prosus's own shares. Since April, Prosus has cashed in over $5 billion by divesting Tencent shares.

Tencent's third-quarter revenue amounted to 514.6 billion yuan, representing a 10% increase year over year, the growth rate as that in the previous two quarters. Excluding the impact of investment income, non-IFRS attributable net profit reached 44.9 billion yuan, up by 39% year-on-year.