Johannesburg-based Gold Fields overtakes Naspers as Africa’s most valuable company

At the start of 2026, Naspers ranked as Africa’s most valuable company, with a market capitalization of $54 billion. The global consumer internet group, best known as the parent of Amsterdam-listed Prosus, had long symbolized the continent’s link to the technology economy. Barely 40 days into the year, that position has changed. Johannesburg-based Gold Fields has moved ahead, lifted by a sustained rise in the gold price that has drawn investors back toward mining stocks and reshaped the market rankings on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

Gold Fields becomes Africa’s most valuable company

Gold Fields’ shares were trading at R865.6 ($54.01) at the time of drafting this report, up from R725.71 ($45.28) at the start of the year. The gain of more than 19 percent since Jan. 1 has pushed the company’s market capitalization to R768.4 billion ($48 billion), an increase of R124.2 billion ($7.75 billion) from R644.2 billion ($40.2 billion) at the beginning of 2026. For a sector often viewed as cyclical and exposed to cost pressures, the move reflects renewed confidence tied closely to bullion prices and earnings expectations.

The shift has come as Naspers’ valuation has moved in the opposite direction. Shares of the group on the JSE have fallen by more than 13 percent since the start of the year, sliding from R1,104.51 ($68.92) on Jan. 1 to R957.19 ($59.73) at the time of drafting this report. That decline has pulled its market capitalization down from R865.5 billion ($54 billion) to R750 billion ($46.8 billion), leaving it behind Gold Fields in the ranking of Africa’s largest listed companies.

Gold Fields forecasts sharp earnings rise

Gold Fields operates as a globally diversified gold producer, with 10 operating mines spread across Australia, South Africa, Ghana, Chile and Peru, alongside one project in Canada. In 2024, the company reported total attributable annual gold-equivalent production of 2.07 million ounces. It held proved and probable gold mineral reserves of 44.3 million ounces, measured and indicated mineral resources of 30.4 million ounces excluding mineral reserves, and inferred mineral resources of 11.6 million ounces. Its shares trade on the JSE, with American depositary shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange, giving it a broad investor base.

The latest rally in the stock follows guidance that headline earnings per share for the twelve months ended Dec. 31, 2025 are expected to come in between $2.79 and $2.97 per share. That would represent an increase of between 110 percent and 123 percent from the $1.33 per share reported for the twelve months ended Dec. 31, 2024. The company has pointed to materially higher gold prices, increased volumes of gold sold and the full consolidation of Gruyere as key drivers, while noting that higher costs of sales, increased royalties linked to the gold price and higher volumes mined have partly offset those gains.

Prosus asset hit by AI shift

For Naspers, the pressure on its share price has coincided with sharp changes inside parts of its portfolio. One of its holdings, Stack Overflow, has seen active usage fall steeply over the past three years. The once-dominant repository of coding knowledge recorded fewer than 3,500 user questions per month in December 2025, or just under 7,000 including deleted questions.

That marked an 80 percent drop from the prior year and a level 98 percent below its peak in March 2014. Including deleted questions, monthly activity had reached around 300,000 at the start of the covid-19 pandemic. As developers increasingly turned to code-writing AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, traffic on the platform fell sharply, underscoring the challenges facing parts of the internet sector.