DStv loses 1 million subscribers in 4 years

At the same time, instalments as a percentage of net income are up 9 percent to 79 percent, leaving limited discretionary spend available each month (despite no load shedding).

It highlights that the decline of its Premium bouquet base is “slowing” with a drop of 2 percent over the last year, versus 6 percent a year in the two prior years.

Overall, it lost half a million subscribers (based on the 90-day active definition) over the last year.
It now has 8,1 million, down from 8,6 million in 2023 — a 6 percent drop.

There have been declines across all three segments (premium, mid-market, and mass market).

The picture in the rest of Africa looks even worse, with a 14 percent decline in the past year — a loss of nearly two million subscribers (to 11,2 million).

Here, the declines are particularly pronounced in the premium and mass-market bases.

The biggest percentage decline was in Zambia (-60 percent), but in absolute subscriber terms, the 18 percent drop in Nigeria is the largest.

In the current market, it has limited pricing power to offset the declines.

It increased prices by, on average, 5,9 percent in South Africa and 17 percent in other countries. Inflation in most of these key markets is running at 30 percent-plus.

In South Africa, the lowest increases were in that battling mid-market base.

Additional services

It continues to bang the drum of adding additional services to offset the decline in subscriber revenue, which is remarkably at odds with major shareholder and suitor Canal+’s stated strategy.

This includes Showmax 2.0, DStv Internet, its betting platform KingMakers and its decoder insurance business.

This has helped it eke out an increase in the average revenue per user (ARPU) of 3 percent in South Africa to R289 a month.

Only problem?

It is selling the rump of its insurance business, with R600 million in revenue in the six months, to Sanlam. It admits that pay TV growth has “plateaued” globally, although subscriptions are in structural decline and revenue is dropping quicker.

The streaming opportunity, primarily via Showmax 2.0, is central to its strategy going forward. It says the paying Showmax subscriber base is up 50 percent year-on-year, driven by the 30 percent increase since its relaunch in February.

Revenue from DStv Stream (the standalone offering not requiring a decoder) is up 71 percent year-on-year.

It continues to cut costs aggressively across the group, with a target of R2,5 billion for the year to end-March (from R1,9 billion last FY).

It has increased this from the R2 billion level it communicated six months ago.

To put this in perspective, the R1,33 billion in costs taken out of the business in the first six months was higher than the R1,28 billion in cost savings from the whole of the 2023 financial year.

-herald