Multichoice active subscribers decline by 18%

Multichoice Group has blamed Nigeria’s harsh economic condition for the 18 per cent decline in its active subscribers, according to its financial result for the year ended March 31, 2024.

According to the group, the 9 per cent drop in its active subscribers was mainly due to a 13 per cent decline in the Rest of Africa business as mass-market customers in countries like Nigeria had to prioritise basic necessities over entertainment, while the South African business showed more resilience with a 5 per cent decline.

“The Nigerian economy and consumers faced persistent challenges through FY24. The removal of fuel subsidies, sharp currency depreciation with the official naira halving in value, inflation climbing to over 30 per cent, and higher emigration of the middle and upper class drove an 18 per cent YoY decline in active subscribers.”

It added that this also reduced Nigeria’s contribution to the Rest of Africa revenues from 44 per cent to 35 per cent. It noted, however, that Ghana saw a similar subscriber trend given an inflation rate that is still above 20 per cent.

Multichoice further stated that due to the challenging market dynamics, the short-term focus of its RoA (Nigeria, Angola, Kenya, Ghana, and Zimbabwe) business was shifted from subscriber growth to safeguard profitability and cash flows.

“Several cost-saving initiatives were implemented, including scaling back significantly on decoder subsidies (-46 per cent YoY or ZAR1.3 billion), and reducing selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) costs by ZAR500 million. These interventions enabled the Rest of Africa business to increase trading profit by 48 per cent YoY to ZAR1.3 billion,” it said.

The company blamed the decline on the power outages experienced on 275 days of the year, which it said further discouraged potential subscribers without backup power.

Amid the rising inflation, Multichoice had increased its DStv and GOtv bouquet prices three times in the last one year.