by Thinus Ferreira
MultiChoice warned that its profit was down by more than 40% for the half year until the end of September 2021, with the South African pay-TV operator that will report its interim financial results on 11 November.
In a trading statement that MultiChoice issued on Monday for its 6 months until the end of September, the pay-TV operator that runs services like DStv, GOtv and its streaming service Showmax across Africa, said that its expects its headline earnings per share for the current period to be down between 35% (R2) and 40% (R2.29) compared to the prior period's reported headline earnings per share of R5.72.
MultiChoice said that the dent in profit in primarily due to foreign exchange losses because of the strengthening of the South African rand as a currency, as well as "deferred content costs" from the previous year, the cost of three major sporting events and the ongoing increase in spending on localised content in South Africa and across the African continent.
"The financial performance for the current period benefited from continued subscriber growth, a strong advertising revenue recovery and further savings generated from the group's established cost optimisation programme," MultiChoice says in the statement.
