Naspers shares tumble on Tuesday as investors digested a sharp warning from Prosus CEO Fabricio Bloisi: the group is about to pour far more money into iFood, its Brazilian delivery business, to fend off an aggressive push from rivals in what remains its most important market. The market did not take the news well. By lunchtime in Johannesburg, Naspers and Prosus were both down about 7% on the JSE, underscoring just how sensitive investors remain to any sign that profitability could be sacrificed for growth.
The warning came in a letter to shareholders marking the start of Prosus’s 2027 financial year. Bloisi said competitors in Brazil have already pledged to spend more than US$1.5-billion this year in an effort to claw back share from iFood. He described that level of spending as unsustainable, but made it clear Prosus will not stand aside and watch its lead erode.
Instead, the group plans to answer fire with fire. Bloisi said iFood will increase investment materially, with the goal of defending its market position while also pushing for further expansion. For a business long seen as the crown jewel of Prosus’s portfolio, the message was unmistakable: management is willing to accept a near-term earnings hit if it believes the long-term prize is worth it.
The financial consequence is already visible. iFood’s adjusted Ebitda for FY2027 is now expected to come in between US$100-million and US$150-million, a notable downgrade from earlier profit expectations. That is a far cry from the strong momentum iFood posted previously, including 178% growth in adjusted Ebit to US$226-million in the 2025 financial year. The broader e-commerce division was also firing in the first half of FY2026, with adjusted Ebitda of US$530-million.
Bloisi, who once ran iFood before taking over as group CEO in 2024, tried to frame the shift as a sign of strength rather than weakness. His view is that iFood is not scrambling from behind, but responding from a position of dominance. In his words, the business knows how to “invest smartly to defend and grow”, and he said the group had already begun regaining market share late in FY26 after increasing spend.
That confidence, however, has yet to calm shareholders. The reaction on the JSE was immediate and brutal, with both listed entities under pressure as traders reassessed the trade-off between expansion and earnings. For South African investors, the move is another reminder that the market still heavily discounts anything that clouds the path to near-term returns.
The challenge in Brazil is not hard to understand. Food delivery is a brutal category to defend, even for the dominant player. Margins are thin, customer loyalty is fickle, and rival platforms are willing to burn cash on discounts, promotions and subsidies to shift behaviour. In a market like that, a leader such as iFood can quickly find itself forced into an expensive arms race.
Naspers shares tumble as Prosus lifts iFood spending
The new spending will not only affect profitability, but also the way some of the revenue is reported. Bloisi warned that the heavier use of incentives will weigh on reported net revenue as well as Ebitda, which means analysts will need to look beyond the headline numbers to understand the health of the business. He urged shareholders to focus instead on orders and gross merchandise value, which he expects to keep rising strongly.
There was, however, some positive news in the broader update. Prosus hit its FY26 guidance, reporting more than US$7.3-billion in revenue and more than US$1.1-billion in e-commerce adjusted Ebitda. That guidance excludes Just Eat Takeaway.com (JET) and La Centrale, both of which were acquired later. The company said all of its ecosystems are now profitable, while free cash flow excluding Tencent continues to improve.
JET remains one of the biggest issues hanging over the group. The €4.1-billion acquisition closed in late 2025 and has been closely watched by investors worried about whether Prosus paid too much for the asset. Bloisi said the business is expected to return to revenue and order growth by the end of FY27, after four years of decline, and aims to deliver more than US$3.6-billion in revenue and over US$100-million in adjusted Ebitda.
Elsewhere in the portfolio, OLX emerged as a strong performer in FY26, generating more than US$450-million in adjusted Ebitda. The French motoring marketplace La Centrale, acquired in late 2025, is now being integrated into OLX’s technology architecture. That includes a broader push into artificial intelligence, with Bloisi saying the company’s AI agent infrastructure now spans more than 2 600 agents across 75 active use cases.
In India, Prosus’s payments arm PayU has also reached profitability and is being positioned as a central connector for the group’s wider bets in the country. Those include investments in Rapido, Swiggy, Ixigo, Urban Company and Meesho. The strategy is clear: use profitable platforms and payments infrastructure to deepen the group’s reach across high-growth digital markets.
Prosus is also still returning serious capital to shareholders. The company continues to buy back Naspers and Prosus shares at an annualised pace of about US$5-billion, and Bloisi said total shareholder returns across the two firms over four years will amount to roughly US$50-billion. During FY26, the group also sold US$2-billion in non-core assets. To satisfy European Commission conditions tied to the JET transaction, it disposed of another 5% stake in Delivery Hero, taking total proceeds from that holding to about US$700-million.
For South African markets, the immediate story is the sell-off. But the bigger picture is that Prosus is clearly entering a more aggressive phase of portfolio management, where it is willing to accept volatility in exchange for defending key assets like iFood and proving the long-term value of its ecosystem strategy. As we’ve reported before, that approach can win when the numbers follow. For now, though, investors have decided to punish the uncertainty. Prosus will publish its full FY26 results in June, and that update will be closely watched for signs that this gamble is already paying off.