{"id":598544,"date":"2025-06-13T08:00:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T06:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=598544"},"modified":"2025-06-13T08:08:44","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T06:08:44","slug":"dstv-owner-ready-for-a-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/598544-dstv-owner-ready-for-a-comeback.html","title":{"rendered":"DStv owner ready for a comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MultiChoice chief financial officer Tim Jacobs believes that volatile external economic factors that negatively impacted the entertainment giant’s business in the past two years are stabilising. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview with MyBroadband about the company’s 2025 financial year results, Jacobs explained the DStv owner had to contend with various issues in some of its key markets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These included high interest rates and surging inflation, frequent and severe power cuts, and fuel shortages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In South Africa, the main problem was a highly indebted middle class. In Nigeria, the power grid failed 12 times in the year, interest rates were around 25%, and inflation at roughly 35%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, the Nigerian government is removing fuel subsidy levies, which Jacobs explained had a particularly heavy impact on discretionary spending. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another large DStv market \u2014 Zambia \u2014 has frequently experienced power cuts of more than 20 hours per day over the past year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We’ve lost another 38% of the Zambia customer base, over and above the big loss that we had last year,” Jacobs explained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to these issues, foreign exchange instability in many of MultiChoice’s markets \u2014 including Nigeria \u2014 also resulted in a R3-billion loss during the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Jacobs said MultiChoice believed there was good news on the horizon as there were early signs that the next year could be a period of stability. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“For example, the Naira has been really consistent for the last six months and has been moving in a band of 20 cents,” Jacobs said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jacobs said if Nigerians’ income streams started to align with the higher inflation levels, people would recalibrate and again be able to splurge more on discretionary spending. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We are not saying that the weakness is gone, but we are starting to see some level of stability that we probably haven’t seen in two years,” Jacobs said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“If we look at our overall subscriber numbers in the Rest of Africa (RoA), we were on 7.5 million subscribers at the half-year, down 7%, and we kept them up to the end of the year,”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Positive swing despite challenges<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Tim Jacobs, MultiChoice chief financial officer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the ways that MultiChoice has started dealing with volatile currencies in Africa is by using a dual-hedging strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We are utilising the opportunities as the currency moves. When the rand strengthens, we hedge our South Africa cost exposures,” Jacobs explained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When the rand weakens, we have started to hedge the RoA payments to the group in rand,” Jacobs said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite a decline in revenue and trading profit, MultiChoice managed to swing from a R2.52-billion loss in 2024 to a R2.02-billion profit in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was primarily attributed to the company’s sale of a majority stake in the NMSIS Insurance business to Sanlam, which netted MultiChoice R1.2 billion in after-tax proceeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This decision is noteworthy as MultiChoice’s prospective new owner, Canal+, has expressed its intention to refocus the company on its core entertainment offerings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The broadcaster also undertook a substantial cost-cutting exercise. “We were able to deliver R3.7 billion of recurring savings by the end of the last year,” Jacobs told MyBroadband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When excluding the impact of MultiChoice’s Showmax investment and forex losses, Jacobs said that organic improvement in revenue was around 20%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MultiChoice also exited technical insolvency after reducing its lease liabilities, long-term loans, and tax liabilities. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MultiChoice’s financial boss believes there are early signs of stability in external economic factors that have put a drag on its business in the past two years. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":569667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[85,475,1019,59587,31938],"class_list":["post-598544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","tag-dstv","tag-multichoice","tag-nigeria","tag-tim-jacobs","tag-zambia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598544"}],"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\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598544"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":598598,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598544\/revisions\/598598"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}