MultiChoice Group

MultiChoice, the South African owner of the DStv and GOtv pay-TV services, the Showmax streaming platform, and SuperSport, published its FY2025 results showing total revenue of ZAR 50.8 billion (about EUR 2555.6 million), down 9% on the year before. Profit from running the business fell from ZAR 7.9 billion to ZAR 4.0 billion, a 49% drop. After paying interest, tax and minority partners, the group reported an underlying loss of ZAR 0.7 billion, against a profit of ZAR 2.2 billion the year before. The company also generated less cash than it spent: free cash flow was a negative ZAR 0.5 billion, the first negative figure in recent years.

These are the last full-year results MultiChoice will publish as an independent company. While the report was being finalised in June 2025, the French media group Canal+ was working through the regulatory approval process for a buyout offer at ZAR 125 per share. That offer closed on 8 October 2025 at a total value of around USD 3 billion. By 24 October 2025, Canal+ controlled 94.39% of MultiChoice; share trading was suspended on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on 27 October, with full delisting expected in December 2025. Both the CEO Calvo Mawela and the CFO Tim Jacobs who signed this annual report have since left the group.

Operationally, MultiChoice is the dominant pay-television operator in sub-Saharan Africa, with 14.5 million subscribers spread across 50 countries, split roughly evenly between South Africa (7.0 million) and the rest of the continent (7.5 million). Beyond the satellite TV core, the group also runs Showmax (streaming, relaunched in February 2024 with Comcast/NBCUniversal as a 30% funder), Irdeto (broadcast technology), SuperSport (sports broadcasting), and minority interests in sports betting (KingMakers), payments (Moment) and insurance (NMSIS).

Key Financial Indicators

All ZAR figures from MultiChoice Group’s Integrated Annual Report and audited consolidated financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2025. Several measures shown, operating profit before one-off items, underlying profit, free cash flow, the loan covenant ratios, are management-defined measures, not standard accounting measures, and are reconciled by the company in its CFO performance review. Where the table shows a covenant cap or floor, this is a contractual limit set in the company’s loan agreement. EUR equivalents are GMFM’s own indicative conversions, calculated at the European Central Bank reference rate published for 31 March 2025 (EUR 1 = ZAR 19.8782, source: Official Journal of the European Union).

Source: MultiChoice Group Limited, Integrated Annual Report for the year ended 31 March 2025, signed by the Board on 11 June 2025.

Performance by business segment

Source: MultiChoice Group Integrated Annual Report 2025. Segment shares of group revenue are drawn from the company’s ‘At a glance’ summary section. South Africa profit margin and Rest of Africa loss are both segment disclosures from the CFO performance review.

Media Asset Map

Source: MultiChoice Group Integrated Annual Report 2025. Subscriber figures, content hours and live event production volumes are management disclosures. The Showmax funding split with Comcast/NBCUniversal is established by the joint venture agreement and disclosed in the report. Equity-accounted associate stakes are reported as at 31 March 2025; the Moment shareholding moved from 29.6% to 28.5% during FY25 due to dilution from third-party participation in the Seed+ funding round.

Signals

South Africa is keeping the group afloat; the rest of Africa has slipped into loss

The two main parts of the business pulled in opposite directions during FY25. South Africa lost 8% of its subscribers (about 589,000 households), but its profit margin actually went up, from 26.2% to 28.6%, and its profit grew by ZAR 647 million. Management put this down to inflation-linked price rises (5.7% in rand), a deliberate decision to spend less on subsidising satellite decoders, and the broader cost-cutting programme.

Rest of Africa moved the other way. The segment swung from a profit of ZAR 1.3 billion to a loss of ZAR 0.8 billion, with reported revenues falling 23%. The main reason was currency: across MultiChoice’s African markets, local currencies on average lost 26% of their value against the US dollar over the year, and the Nigerian naira specifically fell 44%. Subscribers in Rest of Africa also fell, by 591,000, or 7%.

If you strip out the currency effect, the picture changes significantly. On that ‘underlying’ basis, Rest of Africa revenues actually grew 3% and the segment’s profit grew 75% as cost cuts outpaced underlying pressure on the top line. But what gets reported in the accounts is the picture after currency translation, and there, the additional currency hit on profit during FY25 was ZAR 3.0 billion, on top of ZAR 4.5 billion absorbed in FY24. Over two years, MultiChoice estimates that currency depreciation has knocked ZAR 10.2 billion off its reported revenues.

Showmax is now the single biggest individual loss-maker in the group

Showmax, the streaming service that MultiChoice relaunched in February 2024 on a technology platform built by Comcast/NBCUniversal’s Peacock, incurred a loss of ZAR 4.9 billion in FY25, up from ZAR 2.6 billion the year before. The losses grew 88%, and on the company’s own disclosure are by far the largest single business-specific loss in the group. Paying subscribers grew 44% year-on-year, which the company describes as ahead of overall market growth, but management also acknowledges that uptake has been slower than planned and that the streaming business has had to revisit its business plan.

Showmax has its own funding structure. Comcast/NBCUniversal, as a 30% partner, contributed USD 85.5 million during FY25. The CFO performance review notes that Showmax’s funding requirements are a key focus area in discussions with the company’s lenders, since the streaming losses sit on the same balance sheet as the loan agreements. The company is limited in how much detail it can publish about Showmax’s financials by competition concerns and confidentiality terms in the joint venture with Comcast.

There is also a less visible piece of accounting that mattered in FY25. Comcast holds a contractual right (called a ‘put option’) to require MultiChoice to buy out its Showmax stake at the end of the seven-year partnership. That right shows up on MultiChoice’s balance sheet as a liability, and was one of the reasons the group reported negative shareholders’ equity at the end of FY24. During FY25, the value of that liability was reduced by ZAR 1.4 billion, helping to restore the equity position back into positive territory.

Cost cuts of ZAR 3.7 billion almost exactly offset the currency damage

Management exceeded its initial cost-savings target of ZAR 2.0 billion (later raised to ZAR 2.5 billion at the half-year point) and ended up delivering ZAR 3.7 billion in permanent cost cuts — almost double the ZAR 1.9 billion saved the year before. The savings came from a mix of sources: less spent on subsidising decoders (down a further ZAR 0.4 billion), reduced staff numbers (down to 6,853 from 7,251 the year before), platform efficiencies, and tighter management of working capital. Capital spending was held to ZAR 0.8 billion, well below the company’s typical ZAR 1.0–1.5 billion range.

The arithmetic is striking: ZAR 3.7 billion in cost savings broadly offset the ZAR 3.0 billion of additional currency damage to profit during the year. On management’s own framing, without the cost programme, the headline profit fall would have been considerably steeper than the 49% reported. Management has set a further ZAR 2.0 billion cost-savings target for FY26.

MultiChoice is closer to its loan limits than at any point in the past three years

MultiChoice borrows from a syndicate of banks under a ZAR 12 billion loan facility, of which ZAR 11.1 billion was drawn at year-end. Like most corporate loans, the agreement contains ‘covenants’, limits the company is required to stay inside. Two of these matter most: the company’s debt cannot exceed 2.5 times its annual earnings, and its earnings must be at least 4 times the interest bill it pays its lenders. Crossing either limit would, in theory, give the lenders the right to demand immediate repayment.

Both ratios moved in the wrong direction during FY25. Net debt as a multiple of earnings rose from 1.53 times to 2.26 times, moving meaningfully closer to the 2.5 times cap. Interest cover fell from 8.0 times to 5.3 times, against the 4.0 times floor. The CFO performance review attributes the deterioration to lower cash and weaker profitability rather than to additional borrowing: the company actually repaid ZAR 0.9 billion of the loan during the year, using cash from the NMSIS sale. The position is what management describes as ‘adequate financial headroom’, but headroom that has tightened materially over twelve months. No dividend was declared at group level for FY25, in line with restrictions agreed with Canal+ as part of the takeover terms.

The Canal+ takeover: pending in this report, completed on the ground

The latest annual report describes the Canal+ buyout offer as still pending at the date of signature (11 June 2025), with the South African Competition Commission having recommended approval and the long-stop deadline extended to 8 October 2025. Canal+ already held 45.2% of MultiChoice at that point. The June 2024 Co-operation Agreement signed with Canal+ stopped MultiChoice from paying dividends or buying back its own shares while the offer was in process.

Events after the report’s signature have moved quickly. The South African Competition Tribunal approved the deal on 23 July 2025, attaching a package of public-interest conditions, most importantly, around ZAR 26 billion of committed investment in South Africa over three years, and the creation of a new locally-controlled company called LicenceCo to hold the South African broadcasting licences. (Foreign ownership of South African broadcasting licences is restricted by law; Canal+ holds only a 49% economic interest in LicenceCo as a result.) Canal+ closed the offer on 8 October 2025 with 94.39% acceptance, and on 24 October announced it would compulsorily acquire the remaining shares, a procedure available under South African company law once an offer has been accepted by holders of more than 90% of the shares. JSE trading was suspended on 27 October 2025; full delisting is expected on or around 10 December 2025.

Canal+ has said it intends to set up a secondary listing of itself on the Johannesburg exchange, partly to preserve South African investor access. The leadership change is also significant: Calvo Mawela (CEO) and Tim Jacobs (CFO), both of whom signed the FY2025 annual report, have left the group. Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada has become chair of the post-merger board, and David Mignot has been appointed as CEO of MultiChoice. Combining the two companies, the new group serves more than 40 million subscribers across nearly 70 countries, with around 17,000 employees, making this, on Canal+’s own description, the largest deal in its history.

Outlook

The FY2025 results in this report represent the operational baseline that Canal+ has now inherited. The patterns the report sets out, a stable South African business funding the rest of the group, a Rest of Africa segment whose profitability is at the mercy of currency markets, a streaming service that is not yet profitable and depends partly on Comcast funding, and a loan position that has tightened toward its limits, are all part of what Canal+ will be working with from late 2025 onwards. Management’s stated priorities for FY26, recorded under the outgoing leadership, were inflation-linked pricing discipline, a further ZAR 2.0 billion in cost savings, careful cash management, and stabilisation of the loan covenant ratios.

Taken together, the disclosures suggest Canal+ has acquired a business with a stable mass-market position in its core South African market, a structurally challenged Rest of Africa segment exposed to currency depreciation, a streaming business that is loss-making at scale, and a balance sheet operating with limited room to manoeuvre. The strategic logic Canal+ has set out, combining French, Vietnamese, Polish and African pay-TV scale into a global media group serving 40 million subscribers, will be tested against these underlying conditions and against the ZAR 26 billion of South African investment commitments accepted as the price of regulatory approval.

Primary source

MultiChoice Group Limited, Integrated Annual Report for the year ended 31 March 2025, signed by the Board on 11 June 2025. Audited consolidated annual financial statements published separately, available at www.investors.multichoice.com/annual-results. Stock exchange listing: Johannesburg Stock Exchange, ticker MCG (suspended from trading 27 October 2025; delisting expected on or around 10 December 2025).

Subsequent events (post-report)

Canal+ takeover: South African Competition Tribunal approval 23 July 2025; Canal+ closed the mandatory offer on 8 October 2025 reaching 94.39% acceptance; compulsory acquisition of remaining shares announced 24 October 2025 under section 124(1) of the South African Companies Act; JSE trading suspended 27 October 2025; full delisting expected on or around 10 December 2025. Leadership: outgoing CEO Calvo Mawela and CFO Tim Jacobs replaced; Maxime Saada (Canal+ CEO) chair of combined board; David Mignot CEO of MultiChoice. Sources: Canal+ and MultiChoice press releases and SENS announcements; South African Competition Tribunal published reasons; trade press coverage (Advanced Television, BroadbandTV News, TechAfrica News, Investing.com).

Exchange rate

EUR equivalents are GMFM’s own indicative conversions, calculated at EUR 1 = ZAR 19.8782, the European Central Bank reference rate published for 31 March 2025 (MultiChoice’s fiscal year-end). Source: Official Journal of the European Union, ECB euro foreign exchange reference rates, 31 March 2025. The MultiChoice Integrated Annual Report itself does not publish EUR equivalents; the conversions are provided here as an analytical layer for international readers. The South African rand weakened materially against the euro over the year covered, so a period-average rate would yield different equivalents; the spot rate at the balance sheet date is used as the most defensible single reference point.

Editorial notes

Operating profit, profit margin and underlying earnings figures are management-defined measures (called “trading profit”, “trading profit margin” and “core headline earnings” in the company’s own reports) and are reconciled by the company in its CFO performance review. Subscriber figures, content hours, advertising market positions and customer satisfaction scores are management disclosures and not separately audited. The Comcast funding split for Showmax (30%) is established by the joint venture agreement and disclosed in the report. The currency-impact figures (the ZAR 10.2 billion two-year hit on revenues and the ZAR 3.0 billion FY25 hit on operating profit) are management framings of the foreign exchange exposure rather than separately audited line items. Tags: South Africa | Pay-TV | Streaming | DStv | GOtv | Showmax | SuperSport | Irdeto | Canal+ | M&A | Going-private transaction | Africa | Public company | JSE delisting