MultiChoice Group has reached 20.1 million viewers, exceeding the 20 million mark for the first time in its history. Interim results for the half-year ended September 30th, 2020 show that its customer base was split between 8.7 million households (43%) from South Africa and 11.4 million households (57%) from the rest of the African continent.
90-day active subscribers increased by 6% YoY while monthly active subscribers grew by 26%.
In the period under review, the entertainment group committed 38% of its general entertainment budget to produce 1870 hours of local content despite restrictions of the pandemic. This brought its content library to 59,000. Multichoice also launched nine new channels across sub-Saharan Africa and 14 others in its relaunch in Ethiopia.
MultiChoice Group Reports Resilient Interim results For 2021 H1
The company’s core headline earnings rose by 41% to R2.7bn ($175.6 million) following an improvement in trading profit and lower foreign exchange losses.
Multichoice reported a 2% growth in revenue to R26.1 billion ($1.7 billion), driven by subscription revenues which grew by 5% Yoy to R22.2 bn ($1.4 billion). Nevertheless, advertising revenue fell by R0.6 bn in the first four months of the quarter, whereas commercial subscriptions fell by R0.3 bn due to the closure of restaurants and hotels because of COVID-19.
MultiChoice’s cost reduction focus saw the company cut its base costs by R1 billion ($64.9 million) as well as lower its overall costs by 2% YoY.
The group’s trading profit grew by 19% to R5.7 bn ($370 million), which benefitted from resilient performance in the South African markets as well as an R1.2 billion ($77 million) reduction in losses from its other markets in the region.
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