MultiChoice reports subscriber and profit losses, with plans to relaunch Showmax

South African pay TV provider MultiChoice suffers losses across profit earnings and its subscribers base during the six months ending September 30, with the company’s core earnings down by 5%. 

In its latest financial year report the company reported during those six months its core headline earnings had fallen to ZAR1.9bn equivalent to USD $105m. Group revenue did grow by 4% reaching ZAR28.3bn, but on a reported basis, it was 1% lower. The company said this was driven by the negative impact of weaker local currencies and consumer pressure, offset by translation benefits of a weaker ZAR on the group’s USD reporting segments and inflationary-led price increases in the majority of the group’s markets.

The operator struggled to grow its subscriber base, despite coverage of the FIFA World Cup. Following the tournament, the group’s overall 90-day active subscriber base declined by 2% to 21.7m. But Multichoice highlighted the Rest of Africa base accounting for 60% of linear customers, grew by 1% to 13m. However, in total, customer numbers fell by 5% to 8.6m, down 2% excluding non-paying subscribers. Though the group’s premium base posted 5% growth. MultiChoice credited subscriber losses to ongoing high levels of loadshedding and the decision to remove 311k non-revenue generating customers from the base.

Showmax