MultiChoice’s results presentation included a section dedicated to explaining its challenges, including load-shedding, and how these challenges impact subscriber growth.<\/p>\n
“The South African business had to contend with the effects of ongoing high levels of load-shedding as 43% of the days in the reporting period were impacted by stage 4\u20136 load-shedding,” said MultiChoice.<\/p>\n
“Subscriber growth was also affected by a decision to remove 311k non-revenue generating customers \u2014 linked to special load-shedding campaigns \u2014 from the base.”<\/p>\n
“In total, customer numbers were 5% lower at 8.6 million, but encouragingly the premium base posted 5% growth, reflecting a positive trend for the first time in many years,” it added.<\/p>\n
The section includes a chart showing the trend between higher load-shedding intensity and DStv subscriber growth.<\/p>\n
Sadly, the chart doesn’t include meaningful figures, such as subscriber numbers or growth percentages.<\/p>\n
However, it does show that as Eskom implements higher stages of load-shedding, DStv’s subscriber growth tends to decline. Then, when Eskom lessens load-shedding, DStv’s subscriber growth tends to increase again.<\/p>\n
MultiChoice said load-shedding is the most immediate challenge it faces regarding subscriber activity.<\/p>\n “The number of active days per subscriber declined by 5% due to a significant increase in both frequency (i.e. number of days) and intensity (level 4 and above) of load-shedding, especially in the first quarter of the reporting period,” it said.<\/p>\n It said the proportion of days during which Eskom implemented stage 4\u20136 load-shedding has increased substantially since March 2022.<\/p>\n The percentage of days during which Eskom implemented stage 4\u20136 load-shedding sat at approximately 18% for the first half of the 2022\/23 financial year.<\/p>\n This increased to 39% by the second half of the year, and during the first half of the 2023\/24 financial year, it had climbed further to 43%.<\/p>\n To address this challenge, MultiChoice Group CEO Calvo Mawela said they are looking to sell solar power and battery backup systems<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n The product development is currently in the proof-of-concept stage, Mawela told MyBroadband.<\/p>\n Aside from load-shedding, MultiChoice noted that other external factors significantly affected its subscriber base in South Africa and the rest of Africa (RoA).<\/p>\n In South Africa, MultiChoice noted that the country faces a cost of living crisis with high inflation, which has resulted in its customers being more careful when it comes to non-essential spending.<\/p>\n It highlighted that inflation across key markets in its RoA business had also increased substantially in recent months.<\/p>\n Of MultiChoice’s subscription revenue from the RoA, 40% comes out of Nigeria, and the weakening Naira has proved to be a significant headwind for the broadcaster.<\/p>\n MultiChoice said stage 4\u20136 load-shedding was in effect for 43% of the days between April and September 2023, and hurt its subscriber numbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341076,"featured_media":440410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[85,181,35,8487,475],"class_list":["post-515209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","tag-dstv","tag-eskom","tag-headline","tag-load-shedding","tag-multichoice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515209"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":515239,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515209\/revisions\/515239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/MultiChoice-load-shedding-vs-subscriber-growth.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nNow read: DStv monopoly regulation in South Africa \u2014 what happens next<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"