Please, just enjoy the ride

The investment community can sometimes display a marked lack of manners. When a company has put in a belter of a performance that has made an investor richer than Croesus’s more successful brother and guaranteed a couple of extra zeros on the bonus year after year, any connoisseur of etiquette might expect him or her to react with a neatly phrased thank-you letter and perhaps a beaker or two of the blushful Hippocrene. It seems more than a little ungrateful to head to the opposite extreme and come over all Oliver Twist.

Naspers has reported another cracking set of results, largely on the back of its wildly successful investment in Tencent. So it may have been surprised to receive an all-guns-blazing, three-deck broadside from the usually peaceful shores of Lake Geneva. The Swiss may be better known for fully priced horology and weapons-grade confectionery than intercontinental ballistic messages, but this particular example refers with some vehemence to the discount at which the Naspers share is trading in relation to the value of its stake in the mighty Tencent.

Unbundling the Tencent stake might give the shareholder a cheeky little kicker in the short term, but it would be hard to dress it up as an attractive proposition for the Naspers cheeses. It would be a little like asking a jockey who is about to enter the starting gate on a hot favourite for the Prix de l’arc de Triomphe to hop off and see what he can do on foot. It makes a lot more sense to save the postage stamps and enjoy the highly lucrative ride.

Unbundling the Tencent stake might give the shareholder a cheeky little kicker, but it would be hard to dress it up as an attractive proposition for the Naspers cheeses