MultiChoice’s annual profit rises marginally to $697.8 million

South African-based pay TV operator MultiChoice Group posted a trading profit in the sum of $697.8 million (about N292 billion) for the year ended March 31, 2022, just a little higher by 0.4 per cent over what it recorded a year ago according to the company’s audited financials obtained by PREMIUM TIMES.

The measured profit growth came at a difficult time for the company when its Rest of Africa (RoA) operations, which include Nigeria, reported $81.3 million in trading loss even though that was nearly a quarter lower than the loss of the previous year.

“Reduced losses in the Rest of Africa (RoA), a rebound in advertising revenues and a continued focus on cost containment enabled us to absorb the R1.1bn ($74.5 million) impact of a normalisation in content costs as live sport returned and we resumed our local content production post the COVID-19 lockdowns,” Calvo Mawela, the CEO, said.

While its home market South Africa accounted for R35.6 billion representing 64.6 per cent of the company’s entire revenue, RoA contributed the rest.

MultiChoice highlighted the huge impact the popularity of local content like Big Brother Naija had on the performance of its RoA operations.

It signed up 0.9 million new subscribers to its linear pay TV during the year, bringing its clientele (measure on a 90-day active basis) to 21.8 million households.

Core headline earnings, which measures the board’s sustainable business performance, were up by 6 per cent at $237.1 million.

SuperPicks, a free-to-play predictor game marking Multichoice’s first product synergy with KingMakers launched in Nigeria last August and the company said it has half a million users already.

Multichoice noted the taut control by Nigeria’s monetary authorities on the country’s foreign exchange reserves in a bid to conserve the dollar as a challenge to repatriating cash to South Africa. It was able to overcome the snag but that came at a cost with the company paying a premium to the official exchange rate in doing so.

Multichoice highlighted in its financial report that its revenue from subscription fees reflected incurred losses of $11 million “related to fair-value movement on Nigeria futures contracts.”

Mr Mawela said “As a platform of choice, our group will look to further expand our entertainment ecosystem by identifying growth opportunities that leverage our scale and local capabilities.”

Editor’s Note: Exchange rate of $0.06775 to a rand as of March 31, 2022 was used.