By Stuart Thomson
South African pay TV operator MultiChoice’s linear pay-V subscriber base increased by 0.9 million year-on-year to reach 21.8 million at the end of March.
The base comprised nine million subs in South Africa and 12.8 million in the rest of Africa.
MultiChoice said the 5 per cent growth year-on-year was subdued due to the tough economic environment and elevated subscriber growth during COVID-19 related lockdowns in the previous year.
The company posted fiscal year-end revenues of ZAR55.1 billion or €3.36 billion(US$3.53billion) up 3 per cent, or up 7 per cent organically. Profit was flat at ZAR10.3 billion.
MultiChoice said it had continued to invest in local content, stepping up its local content production by 32 per cent year-on-year to 6 028 hours and bringing its local content library close to 70,000 hours. Local content accounted for 47 per cent of total general entertainment content spend according to the company, which said it remains on track to achieve a target of 50 per cent by 2024.
The South African business was hit by rising unemployment levels and riots last year in Durban and Johannesburg. Revenue increased 4 per cent to ZAR35.6 billion, boosted by advertising growth and a 1 per cent increase in subscription revenues. Trading profit declined 1 per cent to ZAR11.0 billon.
Rest-of-Africa revenue of ZAR17.9bn reflects a strong 14 per cent organic increase, it is only 4 per cent higher than the prior year due to the impact of translating Rest of Africa’s USD revenues at a stronger ZAR for reporting purposes. Trading losses amounted to ZAR1.2bn, which is a 24 per cent improvement YoY on an organic basis.
MultiChoice saw stronger growth from its streaming efforts. Paying Showmax subscribers were up 68 per cent, while overall monthly online users of the group’s connected video services increased 28 per cent. MultiChoice said that a major driver of growth was its focus on expanding local payment channels and enabling local billing in various markets.
“Reduced losses in the Rest of Africa, a rebound in advertising revenues and a continued focus on cost containment enabled us to absorb the ZAR1.1bn impact of a normalisation in content costs as live sport returned and we resumed our local content production post the COVID-19 lockdowns,” said Chief Executive Officer, Calvo Mawela,.
“We continued to enhance our video entertainment offering and expanded the variety of services offered to our customers as we grow our entertainment ecosystem.”
