MultiChoice reports “resilient performance” despite sub losses
June 12, 2025
MultiChoice Group has reported that it “demonstrated resilient operational performance” for the year ended March 2024, delivering a 26 per cent trading profit margin in South Africa, while increasing trading profit in the Rest of Africa by 48 per cent, despite a challenging macro-economic conditions. Clear strategic milestones were reached, with the group successfully launching Showmax 2.0, SuperSportBet and Moment, all of which are now revenue-generating and supporting the group’s future growth prospects.
“Four years after setting out a clear strategy of building Africa’s entertainment platform of choice and investing in services to support a broader ecosystem, our three core segments are now fully operational: video entertainment, interactive entertainment and fintech. Our focus now shifts to building on these solid foundations to drive growth in these new areas, and on further enhancing business efficiency across our operations. While we are not alone in feeling the challenges of a weak consumer environment, I am proud of the speed and effectiveness of the team in implementing strategic actions to retain customers, safeguard cash generation and drive costs savings which surpassed our targets. It is the strength of this team, the quality of the underlying business and the clarity of our strategy which underpins my confidence in delivering on our potential,” said Calvo Mawela, MultiChoice Group CEO.
Key points for the past financial year:
- Subscriber base: Overall active subscribers declined by 9 per cent. This was mainly due to a 13 per cent decline in the Rest of Africa business, with Nigeria, Angola and Zambia most affected, while the South African business was more resilient, declining by only 5 per cent.
- Group revenue: increased by 3 per cent on an organic basis. However, due to weaker local currencies and consumer pressure, reported Group revenue declined by 5 per cent to ZAR56 billion (€2.71bn).
- Subscription revenues: grew by 2 per cent on an organic basis. However, on a reported basis, subscription revenues declined by 7 per cent due to a weaker Naira.
- Group trading profit: increased 24 per cent on an organic basis, despite the additional ZAR1.4bn investment in Showmax to drive future growth. After factoring in the ZAR4.5 billion impact related to foreign exchange weakness, reported trading profit declined by 21 per cent to ZAR7.9 billion.
- Positive operating leverage: Given the positive impact of the lower expenditure (including ZAR1.9 billion in cost savings and ZAR1.5 illiobn in reduced decoder subsidies), the group achieved positive operating leverage of 4.3 per cent (i.e. a 3.3 per cent organic revenue increase against a 1 per cent organic reduction in operating expenses).
- Adjusted core headline earnings: Higher realised hedging gains and benefits from a narrower gap between official and parallel Naira rate, was more than offset by the weaker trading profitability, resulting in adjusted core headline earnings (which now includes losses on cash remittances after tax and minorities) decreasing by 20 per cent to ZAR1.3 billion.
- Free cash flow: amounted to ZAR589 million, impacted by lower profitability and the ZAR1.7 billion in Showmax platform payments.
In FY24, MultiChoice reports it produced over 6,500 hours of local content and its local content library now has more than 84,000 hours of content, a 12 per cent increase YoY. The highlight for the year was Shaka Ilembe, which launched on Mzansi Magic in June to become Africa’s biggest TV series.
SuperSport broadcast 34,490 live events during the year. Highlights included the Rugby World Cup in France, the Cricket World Cup in India, a second SA20 season in South Africa, AFCON, FIFA Women’s World Cup in New Zealand and Australia, as well as the Netball World Cup in Cape Town.
SuperSport Schools more than doubled its registered user base during the year. The platform displayed more than 49,000 hours of live programming across 43 different sports codes, covering 900 school sport festivals and events, featuring more than 1,100 schools, and over 14 500 teams.
MultiChoice looks set to be wholly acquired by Canal+.