{"id":827817,"date":"2025-06-11T16:46:43","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T14:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=827817"},"modified":"2025-06-11T16:49:32","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T14:49:32","slug":"multichoice-swings-to-r1-8-billion-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/technology\/827817\/multichoice-swings-to-r1-8-billion-profit\/","title":{"rendered":"Multichoice swings to R1.8 billion profit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Multichoice has declared a profit of R1.8 billion for the financial year ended 31 March 2025, with the group benefitting from selling its life insurance business and lower foreign exchange translation losses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The profit marks a remarkable turn for the company, which declared massive losses of R2.9 billion in 2023 and a R4 billion loss in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group said that the return to its favourable equity position came through cost savings and a stabilisation in currencies, benefiting from the rand’s appreciation against the dollar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its accounting gain on selling 60% of the group’s shareholding in the insurance business (NMSIS) to Sanlam also helped push it into a profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group gained R3.4 billion on the sale of NMSIS, which contributed massively to the group’s R5.2 billion in profit before tax. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A large tax bill of R3.5 billion brought the group’s overall profit to R1.8 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said that the previous two financial years had been a period of significant economic disruption for the markets, corporates and consumers in sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The business was materially affected by structural industry changes in video entertainment, including the rise of of piracy, streaming services and social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During this period, the group lost 2.8 million active linear subscribers and had to absorb a R10.2 billion negative impact on its topline due to local currency depreciation against the US dollar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Management then focused on areas within its control. This led to price increases of 5.7% in South Africa and 31% in local currency in the Rest of Africa to counter the loss in subscribers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although this allowed Multichoice to deliver 1% year-on-year “organic revenue” growth in the current financial year, the group’s actual revenue figure in the income statement showed a 9% decrease to R50 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It delivered R3.7 billion in cost savings, well ahead of management’s initial R2 billion target. However, it still saw its operating profit decline by a massive 34% to R4.7 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its basic earnings increased by over 100% to 1,194 cents, but amidst the likely takeover from France-based Canal+, no dividend was declared during the period.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Multichoice Income Statement for the year ended 31 March 2025<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Multichoice has swung out of a loss, but a deeper dive into the income statement shows that the group is still facing major challenges. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":813504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9878],"tags":[1253],"class_list":["post-827817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-multichoice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827817"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":827833,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827817\/revisions\/827833"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/813504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}