Johannesburg — INTERNET and pay-TV delivered a sound performance for media group Naspers , more than offsetting the pressures experienced by its print business, which reflects global trends.

Naspers owns SA's biggest pay-TV business, MultiChoice, and in the past few years has been expanding its pay-TV and internet interests in Africa, South America, China and Eastern Europe.

In the six months to September, group revenue rose 6% to R13,5bn compared with the corresponding period last year, restrained by movements in Poland's zloty and the Russian ruble against the rand.

Naspers's operating profit from pay-TV rose 26% from last year, its internet profit climbed 45% because of a 78% increase from Chinese cellphone service Tencent, but operating profit from print fell 29%.

Headline earnings rose 35% to 394c per ordinary share. The share price fell 1,4% to R283,85 yesterday. At the end of September Naspers's net debt to equity ratio was 8%. It recently extended the maturity date of its revolving credit facility to March 2013 and the size to 1,6bn, of which it has drawn down 948m.

Chief financial officer Steve Pacak said that there was still debt capacity on the balance sheet and the group had about 600m available for acquisitions offshore through the revolving credit facility, which was sufficient in the short term -- although the mergers and acquisitions pipeline "changes all the time", he said.

Naspers recently finalised the 342m purchase of a 91% stake in Latin American e-commerce business, BuscaPé. Including BuscaPé, the group spent just under R3bn on acquisitions in the six-month period, and last month it bought 51% of South African e-commerce company Korbitec for R158m.

Pay-TV added 352000 gross subscribers in the past six months, of which 238000 were in SA, where the group reaches 2,64- million households, and 114000 were elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, where it reaches 1-million households.

Tencent was a major contributor to the performance of the internet division, with up to 485- million active user accounts and good growth in revenue from games, but other internet activities reported lower operating profit mainly because of adverse currency movements and development costs.

Naspers CEO Koos Bekker told a conference call that development costs were likely to increase in the next six months.

Print media in SA showed no revenue growth because of weak advertising but circulation was resilient, Naspers said. Brazilian print business Abril showed similar trends. Bekker said three- month advertising bookings in SA remained "fairly depressed".

Imara SP Reid analyst Steve Meintjes said Tencent's excellent performance was expected while other internet and e-commerce operations had put in steady to slightly disappointing performances. They were expanding, but not yet contributing to the bottom line.

For the rest of the year Naspers was likely to deliver a similar performance, he said -- likely to be below analysts' forecasts.