{"id":830111,"date":"2025-07-02T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=830111"},"modified":"2025-07-01T17:09:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T15:09:19","slug":"multichoice-ceo-scores-r35-million-payday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/technology\/830111\/multichoice-ceo-scores-r35-million-payday\/","title":{"rendered":"Multichoice CEO scores R35 million payday"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Multichoice CEO Calvo Mawela has earned $2 million (R35 million) after the group improved from a R4 billion loss in 2024 to a profit of R1.8 billion in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group benefited from selling a 60% stake of its insurance business (NMSIS) to Sanlam, which helped push it into a profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The group added that a favourable equity position came via cost savings and currency stabilisation, benefiting from the rand’s appreciation against the dollar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the return to profit, the company was affected by severe economic disruption in markets, corporations and consumers across Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group’s revenue showed a 9% decrease to R50 billion, but the group delivered R3.7 billion in ‘cost savings<\/a>,’ well ahead of management’s target of R2 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the group’s basic earnings increased by over 100% to 1,194 cents, no dividend was declared during the period as the group looks likely to be purchased by Canal+.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the profit jump, Mawela saw his single-figure remuneration decrease from $2.9 million (R51 million) to $2 million (R35 million).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His base salary increased from $702,000 (R12.4 million) to $726,000 (R12.7 million), while his salary and benefits also increased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, his short-term incentives (STIs) decreased from $446,000 (R7.8 million) to $407,000 (R7.2 million).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His long-term incentives were the primary reason for the drop, declining from $1,408 million (R24.7million) to $554 thousand (R9.7 million).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group’s remuneration report showed that Mawela exceeded his targets for cost savings, which partially offset the pressure on South Africa’s margins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also exceeded cash targets for cash, the gross gambling revenue for BetKing and several group projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Showmax proved to be a problem area for the CEO’s remuneration, achieving only 50% of the target to increase the Showmax Subscriber base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South African targets were missed for subscriber numbers, but the Rest of Africa segment reached its target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Showmax revenue saw a 0% achievement rate for its remuneration due to falling short of the Showmax subscriber base numbers in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
Multichoice CEO Calvo Mawela’s remuneration<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Losing customers <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The group noted that it was materially affected by structural industry changes in video entertainment over the year, which included the rise of piracy, streaming services and social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group<\/a> said that it had a total of 14.5 million subscribers by the end of March 2025, 7 million of which were in South Africa and 7.5 million in the rest of the continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was, however, 8% lower than its reported base in 2024, where it had 15.7 million subscribers. The group lost 589,000 subscribers in South Africa and another 591,000 subscribers in the Rest of Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The picture only gets worse when looking at 90-day-active subscribers, which is generally more accurate in reflecting its user base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

90-day active subscribers are defined as all subscribers that have an active primary subscription within the 90-day period on or before the reporting date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group reported 20.9 million of these subscribers in 2024. In 2024, these dropped by 2.3 million or 11% to 18.6 million subscribers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In South Africa, this translates to a loss of 614,000 subscribers using the 90-day metric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amid the drop in customer numbers, management increased prices by 5.7% in South Africa and 31% in local currency in the Rest of Africa to counter the loss in subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Multichoice CEO Calvo Mawela saw his single-figure remuneration drop despite the group improving its R4 billion loss to a R1.8 billion profit. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":828494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9878],"tags":[78,1253,2880,23006],"class_list":["post-830111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-dstv","tag-multichoice","tag-sanlam","tag-showman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830111","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=830111"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":830192,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830111\/revisions\/830192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/828494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}