Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Prosus and Naspers Investor Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. To give everyone the opportunity to participate, please limit yourself to one question. If you should require operator assistance during the conference, please press * 0 on your telephone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Eoin Ryan. Please go ahead, sir.
Great. Thanks, Judith, and welcome, everyone. Thank you all for joining us on the call this morning. We're very excited to share the news we've announced today. With me in the room, I have our chairman, Koos Bekker, our interim CEO, Ervin Tu, our incoming CEO, Fabrício Bloisi, and our CFO, Basil Sgourdos. Here with the purpose of introducing Fabrício to you. Koos, Ervin, and Fabrício will make some brief remarks, and then we'll open the call to Q&A. I do have a challenge for you this morning, though, and that is to limit yourself to one question per analyst, and then once you do that, you can get back into the queue, and we'll see you again. And with that, I will turn the call over to our chairman, Koos.
Thank you, Ervin. Folks, we really appreciate your time. Thank you for giving it to us. We'll try to do all of this in an hour and get the gist up front. So, my role is simply to describe to you the process we followed to get to today and also the result going forward. You will recall that about 6-7 months ago, we felt that we needed a new CEO at the top, and we realized immediately it's going to be an important decision. You know, the last 40 years, Naspers had only three chief executives. And if you get it wrong, it's pretty hard and expensive to change. So, the board was conscious of the importance of a proper process, and it then asked Ervin to step in and be our interim CEO for the next 6-7 months. Ervin didn't apply for the job.
We asked him, and in retrospect, it was an excellent choice. He did it absolutely superbly. He took over, he stabilized the ship, and today we are in a much better position than we were, which you can also see reflected partially in the share price. Now, let me describe the process the board followed. First of all, we appointed a committee to do the interviewing, but the board reserved the right to appoint the CEO finally. We engaged Heidrick & Struggles, one of the best international search companies, to assist us. We interviewed globally on virtually every continent, and in the end, we looked seriously at 60 candidates of a great variety of backgrounds and styles and skills. But you know, as we progressed, we realized that the animal we're looking for is a rather composite figure. We'll never find someone who's perfect in every respect.
There just isn't someone in existence like that. Let me describe just a few of the characteristics we're looking for. One is a factor of personality. People have often commented on which people become good fighting generals or good CEOs, but it's a personality type. A little bit of insanity helps. You have to be especially rugged. You need to take knocks, you need to exude energy, you need to mobilize the team behind you. It's a tough job. I don't need to tell you that. If you just look at what the average CEO of a listed company endures in the market today, you could realize few people want that for a living. We need to find a personality that matches this demand. The second issue, which grew in importance as we progressed, is actually engineering. We did a study of the...
What we regard as our peers, the biggest, best tech companies in the world. And in the end, something like 55% of their CEOs or founders actually have an engineering background. That could be electronic hardware, it could be programming. But because we create consumer products, it helps to understand how the project is physically created. And then another 20-odd%, a little bit vaguer number, actually learned this skill by starting their own companies young. So, they were employee number 1 or number 3, and they learned from the ground up. But those two fields, either a formal engineering, academic background or alternatively, a very early immersion in building stuff, that proved quite vital.
And that was, for us, an important consideration in this role because we realized with artificial intelligence coming, our business will not look the way it does today in five years' time. We're gonna be fundamentally reengineered, and for that, you need to understand the intrinsics. Okay. Then a third set of characteristics that we're looking for involved sort of a financial understanding. What do the figures mean? How does it translate into a good business? With that, doing deals, right? The ability to assess companies we might buy, when we have to sell. So those are quantitative, financially oriented skills, which are also required. Then the last cluster is around, call it representation. So, as a CEO, you have to interact with investors like yourselves, with the media, who are not always equally friendly on all topics, with the board, with your staff, with governments.
Increasingly, we're regulators. You have to deal with governments all over the world. So eventually, folks, we looked at these four, call it broad clusters of skills. We then honed down the 60 candidates we were seriously looking at to 12. We interviewed those intensely, multiple times, most of them personally. In the end, we took a short list to the board and said, "This is the best we could do. These are the best candidates we could find after a process of six months all over the world. Make your choice." And eventually, the board chose Fabrício, who we'll introduce to you very shortly. Let me tell you broadly why. Firstly, Fabrício has a first-class academic grounding, so he studied engineering, programming at a good school in Brazil. Then he did an MBA in Brazil at a good school to add the business components. Then he educated himself further.
He went to Stanford in 2013 and did an executive MBA, and most recently, did a Harvard executive MBA in entrepreneurship and ownership. In between, he also upskilled himself by traveling the world and speaking to entrepreneurs. So, from an academic point of view, he is as solid as you can get. The second is that he is an entrepreneur who started his own company directly out from university. We invested in them pretty early. I think he's been with us for 15 years, so we know him well. And what I-- he might object to me saying it, but I think initially, his products were pretty poor. Right? All sorts of things, ringtones for telephones and kids' programming for Disney and so on.
But what Fabrício had from the beginning was a team around him, a team of engineers that pivoted and pivoted, and pivoted until they found a good model. For them, the good model was iFood. They locked on when it was a company of 20 people, and they built it to into what is today, possibly the best food company in the world, and certainly very, very strong in Brazil, highly respected. Every Brazilian know the company. He has both academic grounding and he's got the entrepreneurial expertise over 15 years. We also have seen him operate, and we know what we have as a quantity here. I think lastly, he has the ability to build a culture. If you look at the way he's run iFood, he's built a culture of entrepreneurship, enthusiasm, collegiality. That's exactly what we need.
So, after looking at all of that, the board felt this is the best candidate we could possibly pick at the moment. Now, we're fully aware Fabrício is not as experienced in international M&A, dealing with investors and so on. And we approached Ervin and said, "Will you be our President and Chief Investment Officer?" And he said, "Yes." And we think that's an excellent team because they complement each other so well. So, with that, I hand over to Ervin for just a few words, and then he'll get Fabrício to talk to you.
Thanks very much, Koos. I appreciate your words. I must say that it's truly been an honor for me to lead the group for the past eight months, and I'm very proud of the accomplishments and progress we've made in such a short period of time. We have reinvigorated the culture of the group. We've made real progress in improving our businesses, and we put in place better processes to improve future decisions. I know not all of that is observable by the market, but we internally know what we've done. We've made substantial improvements to refocusing the organization, the incentive structures and the processes, in particular of our investment team, to better align its outcomes with that of our shareholders. I'm looking forward to working closely with Fabrício to continue and accelerate that work.
In my short time knowing Fabrício, I have known him to be constantly curious, a student of technology and a leader with the ability to think big and bigger. Beyond that, he is an exceptional and disciplined operator, having built and scaled iFood into one of the leading food delivery businesses globally. So with that, I will turn the call over to Fabrício and with my best wishes for his continued success and the continued success of the group for many years to come. Fabrício?
Good morning, everyone. Hello, it's Fabrício Bloisi talking here. Koos, thank you very much for the introduction. Thank you, thank you for the trust from the board. Ervin, thank you for the introduction. It has been amazing to work with Ervin over the last eight months, and I'm sure we'll keep doing amazing things together. So, our first, our first call, my intention is to talk to you about three things: who I am, why I am here, and the priorities starting on July 1st. Probably, you know that I start on July 1st, so we have a few weeks to start learning about the company. So, who I am, I am a Brazilian. I, my undergrad is computer science, as Koos said. I also studied a lot of management and business. I enjoy very much both things, computer science and business very much .
But what I'm 100% focused in entrepreneurship and founding companies. So I started a company 20 years ago called Movile. It's nice to say that Prosus invested in us, Naspers by the time, 15 years ago. It was a small company by the time. And we learned a lot from Naspers. We learned from the South African operations, we learned from Tencent, that has an amazing operation, and was a big inspiration for us. And over the last 10 years, we started investing in iFood, and it was like a quite small operation, but it became something that I'm very proud of today.
I'm not sure how much you know about iFood, but today we have close to 100 million orders, around 65 million customers per year, around 350,000 partners, around 300,000 drivers, 6,000 people inside iFood. But more than that, we are one of the best AI companies in Latin America, so we really have a really big data science team that are making the company every day better. I'm really convinced that we have one of the best teams that don't only talk about AI and do nice slides about that, as everyone does, but we are saving $hundreds of millions today through AI, and we have very good products because we are an innovator on this area and a first mover on this area.
Not only we are good in tech and growth, but we have a big social impact in Brazil with education, inclusion and environment. I really believe the best companies in the world will have big social impact, and I think we are doing that in Brazil. We have one of the most loved brands in Brazil. One recent data from 2022 actually says that iFood today is in charge of 0.553% of the Gross Domestic Product of Brazil. This is a 2022 number. This year, we are growing a lot since 2022. I'm quite proud to say that in 10 years, we came from a small company to an important company in Brazil. I believe we did that because we think very big.
We have a very strong culture to invest in people, the best people, empower them, hire the best talents, and to have entrepreneurship at the core of our culture. Also, I believe we are a real ambidextrous company. I don't know how much you hear about or talk about being ambidextrous company, but at the same time, we create the future through innovation. I think we are very good in creating, testing products innovation. But at the same time, we are a really disciplined company. We have 10 years of track record with Prosus, being disciplined on costs, on M&As that are reasonable, at reasonable and good price.
So being ambidextrous, at the same time, an innovative company, a real innovative company, but at the same time, a company that talks about discipline, delivering results and profitable growth, I think it's a very important competitive advantage of iFood. So that's the culture I want to bring or highlight or develop more in Prosus. I want Prosus to think bigger, I want Prosus to innovate more, but at the same time, keep the discipline that we demonstrated in iFood. Right now, iFood is also going through a succession plan. We are announcing today that our Vice President of Strategy and Finance, Diego, he becomes CEO of iFood today. I will keep there as Chairman, and I'll keep a shareholder of iFood, but I'm moving to Netherlands now.
I'm moving to Amsterdam now, and I'm very confident that I'm going to keep developing all this cultural and all this successful approach of iFood in the Prosus Group. So this is who I am, briefly. Second, I want to tell you why I am here. I'm here because I'm very excited by the opportunity we have ahead. We are in a moment of profound change. We are in a moment that the world is going to be rebuilt. Many companies are going to lose space to innovative companies using technology and AI to change how the world works. And I see that as a big opportunity. I think that's a moment where we create companies that are the future leaders, as a company that we create companies that has big social impact.
As I told you, I believe that we will contribute to innovation in emerging growth markets, to have a social responsibility through technology. It's a moment of change, and moment of change are moments of opportunity to grow, innovate, and contribute. Prosus today has 2 billion customers all around the world, in around 100 companies, and I believe our impact on Prosus through product innovation, technology, will be even more important. That's why I'm very excited. I believe there is a lot of potential to grow and to develop Prosus. As you know, I know much more about food delivery. I've been focusing on that for the last 5-10 years. But Prosus is much more than that. We have payment business; we have our India presence that is amazing. We have our classified business in many countries that has amazing results....
I think actually we have retail in an amazing ecosystem around eMAG. So actually, I could talk to you a lot more. We have amazing assets inside Prosus that can keep growing and can keep growing profitably. And through the change that we are having now in technology, I think we will have better and more exciting company if you explore this opportunity. So, I'm very excited to join Prosus. As I told you, I'm moving to Netherlands, and I'm sure we will have a lot to talk about keeping innovate and improving products and companies over the next months. That said, priorities and where we are today, again, I start on July 1st. July 1st is day one.
So, as an internet founder, I want to move quickly and talk and do many things, but I am starting 40 days, 45 days, so I will take some time to understand the business, the people, to travel around, to know all the business personally. So, I really want to travel and visit the companies and check where we can have competitive advantages and products and amazing product teams. So, I will spend a good time traveling and knowing everyone. I think the best I can tell you on how or what, what I believe and how I behave is look at the iFood story. We think big all the time. We innovate a lot. We want to have big impact, but at the same time, we have a lot of discipline, and we deliver consistent results over the last many years.
So better than say or promise that I think everyone joining would promise that. I can tell you that I'm doing like that for 10 years, and that's a good hint about how the life is going to go on starting today. Not today, July 1st, actually. So not today. So, what are the priorities for now? I'm sure you are thinking, "Okay, so tell me what change?" Take a note, take a pen. What change? The key priorities of the company remain unchanged. So broadly, I'm happy with the strategy of the company. Repeating that for you. We are going to continue the growth of the key business. Obviously, this is the priority that Ervin has been pushing for the last many months, quite successfully. So, congratulations, Ervin. But at the same time, delivering profitability on e-commerce.
So, you heard from Basil how we are doing quite well in our projections. He's here, so he can talk more about that. These keeps being a very strong priority, keep growing profitably on the e-commerce business, and as I said, that's what we have been doing in iFood. Second, better highlight the value of our portfolio. You can take a note on that part, too. We are a company that values our net asset values around $140 billion-$150 billion. I'm sure we had a lot of space to keep highlighting the value inside the portfolio. Third, keep the discipline on capital allocation. This is what Ervin has told you over the last few months, and obviously, I agree.
You can see from the iFood story and Movile story, we've made many investments, none of them with crazy economics or valuations or just like... I think you have to be very creative in product innovation and technology, but very disciplined when you are talking about return on investment. I think that's the story that Ervin is doing for the last few months, and that's what we have been doing in iFood. Fourth, continue to the ongoing share repurchase program. So, this program created around $33 billion in value over the last few, I think, 18 months. Obviously, it is successful, and obviously, we are going to continue with this program. But at the same time, we remain committed to Tencent. I know Tencent for 15 years. Tencent has an amazing leadership through Pony Ma and Martin.
I've been there many, many times, and every time I go there, I come back more inspired. So, keep learning and contributing to Tencent is still a big priority. Obviously, over time, I will talk more about additional areas. I will talk more about what I'm going to learn in the next 45 days. We will have lots of opportunities to talk. I talk a lot, so I'm sure you are going to have many more opportunities. Probably, I can't answer all the questions today because I am in the day minus 45, but I am excited and look forward to talking much more with you all. That's it. Let's go for questions, and let's go to work.
Great. All right, Judith, if we'll take the first question, please.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star and then two to leave the question queue. For participants making use of speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before making your selection. We do remind you that to give everybody the opportunity to participate, please limit yourself to one question. You are welcome to rejoin the question queue for a follow-up. Our first question comes from Cesar Tiron of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
... Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for the call and the opportunity to ask questions. One question, sorry. My question was actually to understand how you made the choice for Fabrício and not for Ervin. But I think Koos really answered that, so I'll move on to my next question. My question is: Fabrício has a very strong track record in food delivery, but also in growing businesses, from startups to market leaders. So would it be right to make the following conclusions from his appointments? Number one, the company could be more focused on food delivery in the future, and number two, future investments could be more focused on small tickets for early-stage companies. Thank you so much.
So, Fabrício, what do you say?
Thank you for the question. I have a lot of experience in food delivery, therefore, it's easier to me to talk about food delivery now. We have many amazing assets. Obviously, I like iFood a lot, but we have great assets on this Delivery Hero, with Swiggy, we have other investments in food delivery. But your conclusion that... So that's the focus now, that's not the conclusion. I want to highlight to you, we have great business in payments, we have great business in India, we have great business in Itaú, around the mega ecosystem and also classifieds. A quick story I haven't told you, but my company started doing mobile, and then we migrate to food delivery more or less 10 years ago, but I've made other 20 to 30 other investments. There are many other segments that were Movile operated.
So, I think the focus of Fabrício is learning where we have a big opportunity through technology and create something around that. That said, obviously, food delivery is something that, that I, I will look and I will work on that. So... But it's not a conclusion that this is the, the only and most important change.
Yeah.
Then you said future investment could be more focused on small tickets, something like that. Do you want to talk on that?
Yeah. Ervin, as our Chief Investment Officer.
Sure, Cesar, let me come in here on investing. Investing, of course, continues to be a really important muscle for us as a group. And what I've said to all of you before is, we will take risk. Our aspiration is to do so in a thoughtful way, so thoughtfully deployed. We are well aware, I'm well aware, and I've said this to all of you, that in recent years, we haven't done a great job of that last part, thoughtfully deployed. I've been making a lot of changes to ensure that we recover that gene and how we express our deployment of capital on the investing side. And how will we do it? Well, in areas where we know something, where we have more understanding, of course, we'll be more prepared to take more risk and larger checks.
In areas which are newer to us, you should expect smaller checks, but that's a general guideline. I think the facts and circumstances will always dictate what we ultimately do. Next question.
Okay.
The next question comes from Will Packer of Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thanks for taking my question. So as at September last year, you had $15 billion of cash on hand. So, could you help us think through the appeal of acquisitions versus more returns to shareholders? Within those returns to the shareholders, the buyback has strong support from your shareholder base, but it's broadly maxed out. Would you consider other forms of shareholder return, e.g. special dividends, tender offers, and what tax considerations would we think through? Thanks very much.
I think, Basil is our Chief Financial Officer.
Thank you, Will, thank you for giving me the easy question. So no, indeed, well, look, we have a meaningful amount of capital on the balance sheet, but there's a couple things we need to understand. First of all, that's not all available, right? Half of that capital has to stay on the balance sheet to support our investment grade rating. So, once you put that aside, there's $7 billion-$8 billion that sits there. We've communicated historically that the intent of that capital is to support our businesses and look for new areas. Ervin has taken you through how we think about that and how we want to improve our deployment on that front. In terms of return, the open-ended share repurchase is impactful. Fabrício's called out us deliver $33 billion of value. It's one of the largest return programs out there.
It's made tremendous impacts on the discount, but we continue to work on that and build on that. Beyond the buyback, there's other things we can do to address the discount, to grow profitably, to highlight the value. In terms of further capital return, there's no decisions, and the board hasn't said anything on that front. For now, as Fabricio outlined in his talk, the strategy remains fairly consistent.
Just mention when you report financial results again?
Yes. So, it's on the twenty-fourth of June that the results are approved, and then we'll discuss them in quite a bit of detail with you.
Okay.
You can go to the next question.
Thank you, sir. The next question comes from Monique Pollard of Citi. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. My question was, one, really for Ervin. Just trying to understand what the new role of President and CIO means, and how that differs from the previous role of CIO?
... and who will ultimately be signing off, I guess, on the disinvestment decisions and the capital allocation decisions?
Happy to take that one, Monique. I think the new role is representative of a broader mandate for me at the group than my previous role as CIO. I will say that Fabrício, as he's already mentioned, starts in 45 days, and we're still discussing some of the details of that, and in time that will come out. You should understand it to be a reflection of a, of what I've been doing, which is contributing broadly across the group as Interim CEO, and as President and CIO, I will continue to have broad impact across the group, with further discussion to come with Fabrício. In terms of your question on capital allocation, who makes the decisions? This. The Group CEO, Fabrício, is coming starting July 1st, he is authorized to make that decision, of course, subject to, limitations.
The board has to weigh in on certain thresholds and so forth. That will continue. At the same time, I will tell you that I will be an important voice in that discussion. Fabrício and I will work very closely together on capital allocation, alongside Basil and other members of our investment committee. I will stay very involved. Fabrício, though, as the CEO, will have the final say.
Monique, it's Fabrício. Just to reinforce on that, I think we've been working together very well for the last months, me and Ervin. Today, he takes care of the whole company today. Prosus is a quite big company with lots of demands and opportunities, and that's what we are going to structure now, to put a few of the business under his responsibility. But this is something to July 1st, when we check again the org chart.
Okay, next question, please, Judith.
Thank you. The next question comes from Joe Barnett-Lamb of UBS. Please go ahead.
Excellent. Thank you very much for taking my question. Rather than asking you, Fabrício, about sort of wider capital allocation, where you may not yet be able to comment, coming from iFood, I wonder if I could ask you a couple of sort of food-related questions. The food delivery industry is under a lot of shareholder pressure to be more prudent, rational, and push for profitability. As a food delivery operator, but now incoming Prosus CEO, can you just talk a little bit about how you stand on that sort of spectrum and that debate of pushing that industry to profitability? And perhaps related, you know, many argue that the food delivery space is ripe for consolidation. It's conceivable with your current positions, that Prosus will be at the center of that.
What's your view and willingness to engage in consolidation within food delivery? Thank you.
Hello. First, I think we are still in closed period, so I cannot talk about the last iFood numbers, but you can see for the last two years, you talked about the pressure on costs or on profitability in foods. iFood has one of the best profiles of the whole industry, so it's possible to grow, innovate, and deliver our reasonable results. Our results consistently are increasing, are doing good, and we are still investing more in social impact, in drivers. So, I'm quite confident that it's possible to create and to have an amazing business in food delivery. That's what I know very well, iFood. I know...
I don't know the details of the other business, because as I told you, I'm joining on July 1st, and I just know the public information about the other business. But Prosus today is supporting them and is supporting them every time more. So Prosus is closer to Delivery Hero and helping more Delivery Hero over the last few months. It's closer to Swiggy and helping more Swiggy. Obviously, the fact I'm joining, we will have more space to collaborate between the business or to try to share best practice. That's my goal. In terms of consolidation, I'm going to start understanding the other business over the next 45 days, and there is no change in our current strategy. So, no change on that or no, no specific plans on anything related to consolidation.
The next question comes from Christopher Johnen of HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks for taking my question. I'm curious on the new incentive structure and the sort of expectations that go along with the two new roles, both for Fabrício and Ervin. If there is any more color on how that is set up, you know, what are short-term, long-term goals, that'd be helpful. Thank you.
Yeah. Maybe I'll respond, Christopher. So, we'll deal with the whole remuneration structure, which is such an exciting topic these days in corporate reporting, in our annual results. So, we will publish extensive analyses in the annual report, and then Craig Enenstein, the head of our Remuneration Committee, will present to you and discuss it. So, we'll do a proper review of it once we've settled all of it. Okay, Judith, next question, please.
Thank you. The next question comes from Marcus Diebel of J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, everyone. My question is regard to capital allocation. Fabrício, you mentioned also AI briefly in your statement, clearly as one of the next growth drivers. We all on the call will agree to that, but what would you say, given the new setup of the management board-
... what is really the edge, in terms of competing, yeah? I mean, it seems AI is very much dominated by U.S. tech, yeah. Most of these players are pretty cash rich. So how do you make sure that you sit at the right tables at the right time when interesting opportunities arise? Thank you.
Hello, how are you? Nice question. Sometimes people, if you talk about them going to invest in AI, you can react. Okay, so you're going to do a large language model and spend a lot of money. Okay, this, this is not what we are, we are doing. Actually, I think there is three or four, maybe five companies doing very big investments in large language models. I think you should understand AI as electricity. It is going to change how everything works, everything, absolute, all companies, absolutely all products. We don't produce electricity, we just connect it to some network, and we use that to create new products and services.
I think Prosus, as a group, we have close to 30,000 people, and close to 10,000 people only in technology, in controlled companies, and much more if you're talking about investment companies. Most of our investments in revenue are in growth markets or emerging markets. I think we are one of the most amazing, in my opinion, emerging markets e-commerce portfolio. We have 2 billion customers in total. The amount of disruption and opportunity we can create through these customers, offering better service to them, is. Remember, we didn't have a smartphone 15 years ago, and we can't get out of home today without the smartphone, because otherwise we will get back running and desperate because we can't live without that.
We will have the same impact in our lives in the next 10 years, so there is so many opportunities for our 2 billion customers that doesn't include, like, large language model production. A quick example on that, iFood is super innovative in AI, and we use, we use everyone. We use OpenAI, we use Prosus AI Assistant, we use Gemini, we even use open-source solution like Llama from Facebook. And this is the kind of approach we have to have. We are in a group in emerging growth markets that has the responsibility to take these solutions, including open-source solutions, to billions of customers in emerging markets. We can do that, leveraging our position, our team, our products today. That's the approach, and I think we will have lots of news and evolutions here.
There is lots of opportunities to develop. Okay.
The next question.
Go ahead.
comes from Kevin Mattison of Avior. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking the question. The appointment of the new management is a break with the past. You have a very diverse portfolio. What will be the board's and management's philosophy towards the underperforming aspects of the portfolio? Is it something where you're gonna have a look, evaluate, see if you can turn it, maybe put a little money? Or do you think there's an opportunity here to focus on the more exciting and high-performing aspects of your asset base?
Kevin, of course, you're one of our most thoughtful analysts and one of the people that understand the business better, best, so you ask intelligent questions. Let's start with Ervin, and then, Fabrício can add to that.
So, Kevin, the portfolio is the portfolio. We have to manage it as a whole, of course. In terms of prioritization, you will see us emphasize what I have been calling our gems, the great businesses within the portfolio. But we also have been in significant fix-it mode for two years. We will continue to try to find great outcomes for some of the underperformers. Sometimes we will choose to exit, we will shut down, or we will sell. Sometimes, even if we seek to sell, there's no bid for the business. So, the best thing for the group is to try to at least ensure that that business in question is not a burden to the group. So, you'll see us enhance the operating profile of some of our underperformers, just to get it to a place where it's no longer a burden.
In all cases, you should know that we have to fix and improve the underperformers, in addition to investing and focusing on our gems. We do have to manage the portfolio as a whole. Fabrício, anything else?
I'm 100% aligned with Ervin. I'll just give you a few stories to prove my point. You may think I am like a founder, internet. I like innovation; therefore, I just like to keep doing everything and keep experimenting. That's not the story of my company. Just to remember, Movile had at least 10-15 investments. We sold, like, half of them when they are not giving results. We sold or closed half of them. So, I am a passionate founder that also says, "This is not working." I'm also passionate to, passionate about growing and delivering successful business. So, it's not working, it's not working, you work hard to fix it, and you have to fix it. So, you face the brutal facts. You have to do...
You reduce when you have to reduce, you push to, to move faster, and if it doesn't work, you sell or even close it. So, I've done that, like, 10-15 times around Movile. I think Prosus has a much bigger and more complex portfolio, so I'm not ready today to talk about the whole portfolio because it's very big and complex. But I will be in a few weeks. I think I can help more in the fixing part, because I have a lot of experience in operations, and I think I'm very... how can I say? 80/20, in terms of saying, "This works, the rest doesn't work, it's a distraction," so we have to solve it somehow, what includes reducing, optimizing, or even selling or closing.
The next question comes from Madhvendra Singh of HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my question. My question is to Fabrício. How do you plan to tackle the Indian opportunity, given your experiences mainly in Brazil? Is there any specific learnings you can think of which would help in scaling the Indian businesses better or make them as successful as iFood? And what do you see as your biggest challenge there in India? Thank you.
Hello, Patty, right?
Maddy.
Maddy?
Maddy.
Maddy.
Hi, Maddy.
Nice to talk to you, Maddy. You said that the most of my experience is Brazil. It's true, I lived in Brazil until yesterday. However, I am traveling all around the world and really learning with the best opportunities in the world. Like, to me, visiting India and China is. I think a good thing of this new position is that I have to visit much more often India and China. I really love it. I used to go there every year and take, like, 15-20 people, iFood, to India and China, because I really think you grow faster when you learn from everyone in the world what they are doing best. So, learning from China obviously is an inspiration through Tencent. On India, we have Harsha and all the Swiggy team. I think we learn with them many things in iFood.
For example, they are being very successful in the dark stores in the grocery area, and we are looking at it closely. We have many venture investments in India also, for example, the Meesho and many others, at least 10 or 20 more. So, my approach to India is, you can expect me to spend more time there and learning much more and thinking how we can use our global structure to leverage our India position. This is not a simple solution because I don't deal very well with pepper food. How do you say that? Spicy food.
Spicy food.
I will have lots of challenge, but I will manage that, and I will be in India learning a lot over the next weeks, hopefully.
Thank you. The next question comes from Cesar Tiron of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks. Sorry, my questions have been answered.
Good to see you here, Bank of America. Hope to talk to you again next time. Cesar, right?
Yep. So next question, please, Judy.
Thank you. The next question comes from Nadim Mohamed of SBG Securities. Please go ahead.
... So, the opportunity to ask questions, also congrats to Fabrício on the appointment. Just one question from my side. On iFood, you mentioned that the data science team has saved hundreds of millions of dollars through deploying AI and other technologies. Just wondering if you could give us some color through maybe one or two stories on how, on the kind of successes that you achieved, and also how you think this could be deployed more broadly across group level. Thank you.
Thank you, Nadim, for the-
Nadeep.
Nadim. Thank you, Nadim, for the congratulations. We talk a lot about AI in iFood for 4 or 5 years. AI is a buzzword in the next 18 months, but actually it started, probably, you know, 30 years ago. So, in iFood, we made two big acquisitions. Not big in price, actually, it was like 50 people company, but we made two big, important acqui-hires, I think 4 years ago. So, we have, like, a quite big AI team. I can tell you, everything in iFood is AI-oriented today. So, we make, I think, 15 billion inferences per month. That is conclusions of AI about how the app should behave.
If you just open the app, what you see, the restaurant, the order, the promotion to you, where we are going to suggest the drivers to be, what kind of foods, everything you see in iFood, including the delivery time, everything is defined by AI to make inferences about how do you behave, what do you like. Every 15 days, we update our models in the whole company, and we check. We do A/B tests for everything. So the AI thing, some people expect like a robot that talks and do crazy things, but what we do is that every week, we can increase conversion rates and reduce acquisition costs by 1, 2, 3% because the new model is more efficient in handling things that we are doing for 5, 6 or 7 years.
So, most of this, the number is close to $200 million in savings just on AI things. Most of this is things that can be simple. Are you going to offer this restaurant or this restaurant first? Then if you offer the right one and you optimize that every week, you increase 0.5%, 1% every month, and the whole results get better. We have lots of impacts in other more, how can I say, fancy things. So, we have, like, interface to people talk through chat and make orders through chat. We can do interface to do the chat, to not only make orders, but to, to talk in the call center. So even our internal call center team, they use AI to get recommendations about how they should serve better the customer. The external customer and the drivers-...
We deliver more than 3-4—around 3-4 million orders per day. So, most of the feedback to the customers is done through AI systems. I want to highlight one or two things specifically, fraud detection and reduction with all kinds of fraud assistance. The level of improvement on AI were dramatically, so we really can operate the business much better in terms of costing less to support the customers and to, how can I say, reduce bad behavior of customers. Other funny or interesting ways to do that, for example, when a restaurant join iFood, they can take a picture of the... This is using generative AI, the picture of their existing menu, we automatically import everything.
We prepare their whole menu, we put the pictures, and we improve the quality of the pictures in terms of light and the descriptions. We can even ask help them to describe better their own food, just taking the picture of their menu. So, it increases sales of the restaurants, reduce the time to the restaurants to get into the platform, and makes the experience of the customer better. I have 30 examples like that. So, most people who talk about AI, they think about, like, how this robot is going to change my house. There is not no robot. It is everything you do is simpler, faster, and cheaper, and that's the approach you have to have. Have very good people improving all the business every week, enhancing models.
Thank you, sir. The next question comes from Will Packer of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thanks for taking my question again. So Fabrício, I wanted to ask regarding the Meituan stake as someone steeped in the food delivery industry. Historically, Tencent has been Prosus's sole China play, but with Meituan exploring international expansion, while Tencent consolidates its third-party stake portfolio in China, could we see the stake as more of a long-term strategic holding, complementing iFood, Swiggy, Delivery Hero, et cetera? Or should we think of it as more of a short-term holding, like JD.com was? Thank you.
Will, I like very much your question, therefore, I'm going to ask Ervin and Koos to help. That's the difficult question I'm going to ask them. Let me ask why, Will. I haven't even talked to Meituan today yet, and I have to spend some more time studying that, but Ervin, the smart guy in the room, can help on that.
Hi, Will. Meituan, as we've said, actually from the very beginning when we received this gift from Tencent, is a hybrid for us. It is, yes, a listed asset. We have a small position in terms of percentage shareholding, and in that regard, then we should think about it as more of a financial holding. At the same time, because it is food and because the business is, it's an excellent business where we can learn from each other. In point of fact, Fabrício and his team, actually last year, and Fabrício can share more color, visited that... They're doing in China because there are initiatives that they've been successful in executing there, which we can try in Brazil. So, for that reason, Will, this has always been a hybrid.
We will, though I can assure you, look at it in a very dispassionate way as we look at any of our businesses with respect to how it's performing, its return potential, and the like.
Okay, Judith?
Thank you.
Yeah.
The next question comes from David Smith of Investec. Please go ahead.
Thank you, gentlemen. Koos, this is for you. Considering 86% of your NAV is listed, can you frame how the board thinks about the CEO role? In your view, were you solving for an excellent operator, or were you trying to solve for an excellent portfolio manager role, and how you balance those two?
Yeah, David, very good question. That's exactly what we tried to figure out in this whole search and interview process. It basically, basically, you find two types of career paths. Someone either comes up the business line, typically MBA, and goes into a financial direction, and M&A direction, and so on, and is skilled in that field. And that often goes with good communication skills and ability to talk to the media and so on. That's one cluster skill, or cluster of skills. Then you get the more engineering operating side, and it's very seldom that someone is equally balanced. As we progressed, we realized that at the moment, we need to think more about engineering than M&A.
And the reason is, when we entered the internet, we didn't have assets, so the only way to get assets, buy them, and that emphasizes the assessment, the M&A part. At the moment, we have some very good assets. We also have some poor ones we need to get out of or sell or whatever, but we have very good assets, but they need to be managed. And what makes the engineering demand, especially acute, is what's happening with AI. So, in my life, I went through a few transitions. One was, open advertising-supported television, moving to pay TV, and eventually, pay TV knocked the stuffing out of everyone else because it was the revenue model that worked. Then mobile phones taking over from fixed line. You remember a time when AT&T was running the world?...
most admired, solid company in America, and fixed line completely disappeared as an economic entity, and then later, the commercial internet. Now, what's happening with AI is, at least in my assessment, something of that scale and order. And the way we look at it, either we attack with AI as our friend, and we invade other people's territory, and we grow, or we'll get wiped out. We won't be the same company five years from now, there's no chance. The technological switch is too huge. So, there's definitely been a shift in our thinking towards an engineering stance to say: firstly, we've got great assets. They need to be run. Let's run them as well as we can. Stay close to the customer, close to the product, provide a really good service, and the money will follow the customer service.
And then, the second big consideration is that at this historic moment, AI is impacting. It's an explosion, and we need to transform our company to... for the new world, and that's what we hope Fabrício will help us to lead us in.
Helpful. Thank you.
Thank you very much, sir. At this stage, we have no further questions. I will now hand over to Eoin Ryan for closing remarks.
Great. Thank you all for joining. Our next call will be at the end of June, as Basil said, on June 24th. And, of course, if there's any follow-up questions, please reach out to us here in IR. All the best and thank you very much.
It is Fabrício. Thank you very much. Pleasure. Next time, I hope I will talk much more and look forward to talking more. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's event. Thank you for attending, and you may now disconnect your lines.