DStv-owner MultiChoice’s results in a nutshell

MultiChoice made a R1.8 billion loss in the first six months of its 2025 financial year, citing “unprecedented external headwinds” like foreign exchange impacts and a greater investment in Showmax.

MultiChoice released its results for the six months through September 2024 on Tuesday, which revealed another poor performance for the technology giant.

The company’s revenue decreased by 11% to R24.4 billion, while its operating profit dropped by 49% to R2.45 billion.

The company’s loss for the period deepened by over 100% compared to the previous year, going from R911 million to R1.84 billion.

MultiChoice’s basic loss per share deepened by 36% to 421 cents per share.

The technology giant has also remained technically insolvent, with its liabilities exceeding its assets by a significant margin.

The company has a negative equity of R2.72 billion, a significant deterioration from R1.07 billion the previous year.

MultiChoice attributed these poor results to struggles in the pay-TV industry, as well as the “most severe foreign exchange environment in the group’s history”.

“Globally, the pay-TV industry is facing challenges from streaming services, the rise of short-form video on social media platforms and changing consumer preferences,” the company said.

“These pressure points are starting to accelerate in the group’s core market in South Africa, while severe macro, power and other consumer headwinds in the group’s Rest of Africa footprint are limiting growth in linear and streaming, despite lower market penetration.”

“At the same time, the most severe foreign exchange environment in the group’s history has negatively impacted its financial results.”

MultiChoice reported that its Rest of Africa segment had to absorb another R2.3 billion in foreign exchange losses in trading profit in this six-month period, in addition to R4.3 billion in its 2024 financial year.

Despite these challenges, MultiChoice also highlighted some positive developments in the company’s performance.

For example, it reported a lower subscriber attrition rate in the linear pay-TV subscriber base compared to the second half of its 2024 financial year in both South Africa and Rest of Africa

In addition, Showmax’s paying subscriber base increased by 50% year on year, excluding discontinued services.

However, the company also highlighted Showmax as a drag on its results in this period.

MultiChoice invested an additional R1.6 billion in Showmax during the six-month period and said that stripping out Showmax would have seen the group report a trading profit increase of 28% on an organic basis

The Showmax segment’s trading losses increased by just over three times year-on-year to R2.4 billion on a gross basis before NBCUniversal’s 30% minority share of funding these losses.

This was impacted by a step change in general entertainment content costs, increased technology costs, and higher sales and marketing expenditures to support market and partnership launches.

Things did also not go well for MultiChoice’s linear pay-TV business, which saw subscription revenues decline by 2% on a net basis against a 3% decline in the prior period

However, its average revenue per user (ARPU) grew by 3% to R289, the first year-on-year improvement in ARPU since 2017.

Below is an overview of MultiChoice’s results for the six months ended 30 September 2024.