By: Natasha Archary

MultiChoice has lost R4.1 billion, reporting its worst financial performance on record between 2023/24.
With a 9% decline of its subscriber base, MultiChoice continues to bleed following the R911 million loss over the last 6-months of 2023.
MultiChoice Group CEO, Calvo Mawela joins Gugulethu Mfuphi on Kaya Biz to share some of the obstacles the business has had to overcome and continue to navigate.
“We had to navigate a very challenging macro-economic environment in this financial year.
We were very deliberate in what we very deliberate in what our focus was going to be, saying we’ll manage the business for cash, focusing on our financial metrics which is our revenue, trade-in profits and free cash-flow.
What we did despite having a hit of R4.1 billion especially coming out of Nigeria is that we’ve able to accelerate our cost savings, delivering R1.9 billion against an initial target of R0.8 billion.
We were able to ensure that the rest of Africa continues to deliver positive trading profit, which increased by 4% to R1.3 billion.
In South Africa, despite loadshedding being at its worst over the last year, we have kept our trade-in profit margin at 26%.”
MultiChoice subscriber growth in South Africa was negatively impacted by the decision to end the short-term campaigns which were run in the previous year, to support customers during loadshedding
This resulted in 311 000 non-revenue generating customers being removed from the 90-day active subscriber base.
Listen to the conversation on Kaya Biz:
Also read: COGTA estimates the damage of last week’s KZN storms at over R1.3 billion



