Top South African company goes from hero to zero

On Wednesday, 11 June 2025, Multichoice released its annual financial results for the year ended 31 March 2025.

It described its macroeconomic trading environment as exceptionally challenging. It stated that it faced unprecedented headwinds over the past year.

These headwinds include an increase in piracy, the shift to online streaming, and competition from content on social media.

Revenue declined by 9% to R50.8 billion, primarily due to an 11% drop in subscription revenue, and trading profit decreased to R4.0 billion.

In South Africa, Multichoice’s 90-day active DStv subscribers declined from 8.551 million to 7.937 million over the last year.

In the Rest of Africa, Multichoice’s 90-day active DStv subscribers declined from 12.383 million to 10.655 million over the last year.

This resulted in a decline in 90-day active DStv subscribers across the group from 20.934 million in 2024 to 18.592 million in 2025.

Multichoice’s strategy to address the decline in DStv subscribers is to invest in ShowMax, its online streaming platform. However, this is not working out.

Although Showmax’s active paying customers increased by 44% year-on-year, its revenue declined from R1.3 billion to R1.0 billion.

Showmax’s trading loss increased from R2.6 billion to R4.9 billion. Simply put, the streaming platform is losing money at a rapid rate.

Multichoice previously stated that it is confident that Showmax would generate $1 billion (approximately R18 billion) with its Showmax 2.0 service.

In May 2023, Multichoice announced its goal to generate revenue of more than $1 billion within five years, with a trading profit breakeven target by the end of the full year 2027.

It was targeting earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) margins of 25% and free cash flow margins of around 20% at scale.

Two years in, and the company is moving in the wrong direction. Instead of showing rapid revenue growth, it is declining.

Multichoice revenue decline

Multichoice reported a significant reduction in its revenue from continuing operations from R55 billion to R49.98 billion, a  9.1% decrease.

This has continued Multichoice’s downward revenue spiral since 2023, when the group reported revenue of R59.1 billion.

The overwhelming majority of the deterioration in its revenue came from its primary source of revenue, its subscription fees.

Multichoice’s subscription fees fell off a cliff from R45.2 billion to R40.2 billion, a troubling 11.1% deterioration.

It stated that the reason for the deterioration in its subscription revenue was due to foreign currency as well as subscriber number headwinds.

Multichoice subscriber numbers decline

Multichoice have been experiencing a significant reduction in its subscriber numbers in recent years. The current result added to the downward trend in its primary revenue source.

Multichoice saw a significant reduction in its subscribers in South Africa as well as in the Rest of Africa, bringing its overall active subscribers down by 7.5%.

This means that Multichoice lost 1.18 million active customers over the last year, with no signs that this trend can be reversed.

Multichoice struggling financially

Multichoice reported a 49% decrease in its trading profit which was primarily due to major setbacks in Showmax and the rest of Africa.

Multichoice saw its trading profit from its Rest of Africa business fall from a profit of R1.3 billion to a loss of R760 million.

The reason why Multichoice did not report a net loss was due to a successful sale of its insurance business, NMSIS, at a 60% profit to its book value of R3.4 billion.

This helped the group report a net profit of R1.8 billion as well as rid itself from technical insolvency.

However, looking at Multichoice’s core operations and excluding the once-off impact of the NMSI sale, Multichoice would have reported a net loss of R1.6 billion keeping all else equal.