Takealot, South Africa’s largest online retailer and a wholly owned subsidiary of Naspers, posted its first full-year operating profit in its 15-year history on Monday, crossing a milestone that has eluded the business through two ownership transitions, a global pandemic, and the recent entry of Amazon into the South African market.
For the financial year ended 31 March 2026, the Takealot Group swung from a $13 million adjusted EBIT loss to an $11 million profit, while group revenue grew 18% in local currency to $1 billion — equivalent to R16.41 billion at average exchange rates. Adjusted EBITDA rose 60% in rand terms to $78 million, and gross merchandise value grew 14% to $2 billion.
Despite the turnaround, Naspers declined to reverse the R5.9 billion impairment it booked against Takealot in the 2024 financial year — a signal of institutional caution even as the numbers improve. The goodwill carried against the Takealot cash-generating unit stood at just $51 million, and in valuing the business Naspers applied post-tax discount rates of between 17% and 21%, at the higher end of its range, reflecting continued uncertainty in its long-term forecasts. The un-reversed writedown is not a commentary on FY2026 performance — it is a statement about how much confidence Naspers is prepared to commit to the forward trajectory of an e-commerce business operating in one of the world’s most price-competitive retail environments.
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Three structural drivers explain the profitability inflection. The first is TakealotMORE, the subscription loyalty programme launched in May 2024 in a deliberate echo of Amazon Prime. TakealotMORE has experienced rapid adoption and now accounts for 27% of Takealot.com’s overall gross merchandise value — one of the primary drivers behind the group’s first-ever profit, according to Naspers. Subscription programmes generate predictable recurring revenue, improve customer retention, increase purchase frequency, and shift the customer relationship from transactional to habitual — all of which improve the unit economics of a marketplace that has historically competed on price alone.
The second driver is retail media — essentially, advertising revenue from brands and sellers paying for visibility on the Takealot platform. Retail media revenue grew 37% during the year. This income stream carries structurally higher margins than product sales and has become the primary profit engine for mature marketplaces globally, including Amazon itself, where advertising now generates higher operating margins than either the core retail business or its cloud computing division.
The third driver is Takealot Fulfilment Solutions, the group’s logistics infrastructure business, which recorded 93.5% revenue growth year on year as Naspers began monetising its warehouse and delivery network by offering fulfilment services to external customers across South Africa. This is a page directly borrowed from Amazon’s own playbook — converting an operational cost centre into a standalone revenue stream by renting spare logistics capacity to third-party merchants. Naspers views the parts as mutually reinforcing: Takealot.com and Mr D generate transactional volume that provides scale, TakealotMORE deepens customer engagement and frequency, and Takealot Fulfilment Solutions converts operational capacity into revenue.
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Mr D, the group’s on-demand delivery platform serving restaurants, groceries, and retail shops, grew revenue 11% in rand terms to R2.26 billion and delivered a stable adjusted EBIT of R65.6 million. The platform has maintained profitability while managing competitive pressure from Checkers Sixty60, which has expanded its grocery delivery coverage aggressively across South Africa’s major metropolitan areas.
The competitive context matters. Amazon entered the South African market in May 2024 and has since grown rapidly, deploying Prime membership at R59 per month — considerably lower than comparable international pricing — to build a subscriber base that competes directly with TakealotMORE. Temu, the Chinese marketplace, has also expanded its South African presence through aggressive pricing. That Takealot delivered its first full-year profit in the same period as both competitors gained meaningful traction is the result that will carry the most weight for Naspers as it considers the capital allocation decisions ahead.