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Our strategic priorities

Our ambition is to create value for our shareholders on a sustainable basis by leveraging our existing platform to create a broader ecosystem of consumer services. We plan to do this by maintaining a leadership position in our traditional video business, and by capturing the nascent African SVOD opportunity with our global streaming partners. We also aim to support KingMakers and Moment on their development paths and to consider targeted investments and strategic partnerships over time.

Lead in content aggregation and differentiate in local and sports content

In an evolving video entertainment industry, a differentiated content strategy is key to success. Our strength lies in our local content expertise, the appeal of our sports offering and our ability to aggregate and connect our viewers to a full-service video entertainment offering.

Our significant and growing investment in local content sets us apart from international competitors, especially as African viewers love to see content in their own languages, with local actors and stories that resonate culturally. Demand for local content continues to exceed our supply, and local content is cheaper to produce on average per hour with lower currency risk than international content. We also have greater control and flexibility in how we leverage owned content across our packages, services and platforms.

On the sports front, we remain committed to exciting customers with the best in local and global sport while carefully managing the cost of acquiring sports broadcasting rights to ensure that we can run a sustainable business. We are the largest funder of sport on the African continent. Our local production capability is unmatched and is globally recognised by peers and sports bodies for its professional expertise and quality (e.g. we will be the host broadcaster for the 2023 Netball World Cup).

We also ensure that our subscribers enjoy a compelling international general entertainment content offering through licensed series, films and channels, and through access to third-party streaming services on our connected devices. The video entertainment industry has undergone a fundamental shift and created new ways for us to engage with our customers as they opt for a portfolio of entertainment options rather than one dedicated provider. An opportunity therefore exists for an aggregator like us to provide a single, seamless customer interface to an entertainment platform of choice in the home. Our connected device and aggregation strategy aims to ensure that our traditional broadcast business captures this nascent but compelling long-term opportunity.


How we performed in FY23

  • We continued to improve our line-up of dedicated local language channels following the launch of five additional local channels in FY23
  • Produced 6 587 hours of local content, representing 9% growth YoY
  • Local content spend accounted for 50% of total general entertainment content spend and we reached this threshold a year earlier than targeted
  • Local content library increased by 9% YoY, reaching 76 014 hours
  • We successfully broadcast the FIFA Soccer World Cup across our linear and streaming platforms, and re-ignited the South African cricket scene with the launch of the inaugural SA20 competition
  • We broadcast 24 899 live sports events (+69% YoY) and 1 068 own live productions (-12% YoY)
  • SuperSport Schools delivered 33 907 hours of live school sports (+542% YoY)
  • We renewed selected sports broadcasting rights available for renewal this year, including the English Premier League, Cricket South Africa, SA Rugby, Formula 1, the new LIV golf tour, WWE, as well as SA Netball and the Men’s and Women’s Cricket World Cups

Looking ahead

  • Further increase our local content investment and production hours
  • Renew relevant sports and general entertainment broadcasting rights on an ongoing basis at acceptable cost levels
  • Drive the uptake of our DStv via Streaming service and bundles with our connected devices and broadband offerings
  • Work on the development and integration plan for the Sky Glass device syndication

Enhance SVOD capabilities and accelerate adoption

Our track record reflects our ability to innovate and adopt new technologies with the aim of catering for our customers’ ever-evolving needs. Although there have historically been challenges around broadband connectivity in our markets, customer behaviour is increasingly moving online and we believe that we are approaching an inflection point in terms of broadband access and affordability. This will support an acceleration in the adoption of streaming services across the continent. As such, it is critical that we position our business ahead of the growth curve and potential increase in competition.

By joining forces with Comcast, we are looking to build on Showmax’s streaming success and accelerate the uptake of its SVOD service by leveraging our local content and execution capabilities, as well as the Comcast group’s international content and scaled technology capabilities. We are aiming to become the leading streaming service on the continent as the market opportunity scales by:

  • further differentiating and strengthening our content line-up, particularly in local content, sport and through one of the leading global content portfolios, and
  • continuing to improve the UI, UX and scalability of our service, by leveraging the best technical features of Showmax and Peacock.

We are mindful of the global commentary and debate around streaming models as we exit a decade of cheap money and a ‘growth at any cost’ mindset. With the benefit of a long-term mindset and hindsight from observing the experience of our global peers, we are working with our partners to develop and execute a streaming strategy that does not pursue scale at the expense of sustainable economics and appropriate returns on investment.

Streaming is quickly becoming a consumer preference in developed markets and, notwithstanding necessary refinements to the business model, the world is not going to walk back from this technology-enabled evolution in video. Our objective, then, is to become the streaming service of choice for all Africans as part of our broader set of video services that cater to the needs of all our consumers.

How we performed in FY23

  • Negotiated and announced our joint venture with the Comcast group to create the leading SVOD service for the African continent
  • Delivered 26% YoY growth in paying Showmax subscribers
  • Increased the number of Showmax Originals during the year to 48, up from 18 in FY22
  • Made further enhancements to our Showmax service through ultra-low data usage streaming options, improved personalisation and content recommendation engine and a scaled back-end to support higher simultaneous streaming for events like the FIFA World Cup

Looking ahead

  • Bed down the Showmax-Comcast partnership, which became effective in April 2023, before launching the new service in 2H FY24
  • Further invest in Showmax Originals and the localisation of the Showmax service across the core target markets
  • Successfully transition to the Peacock platform and leverage its global features, enhanced by local innovations developed by the Showmax engineers
  • Continue to grow our paying Showmax subscriber base


Drive growth and support retention

Growing and maintaining a vibrant subscriber base remains key to our success as a group. Our South African subscriber base has different characteristics across our packaged tiers, and we need to cater for our subscribers’ specific requirements and circumstances. Given economic and loadshedding challenges in our core market, we are particularly focused on retaining customers in the top and mid markets, while continuing to grow the mass market subscribers. Since our video entertainment operating costs are largely fixed, scaling our customer base and implementing inflationary-linked pricing remain an essential element of the Rest of Africa segment’s path to self-sustaining cash generation. Our ‘installed’ customer base (customers who own a decoder) also provides the foundation on which we are building out our consumer services platform, as it provides opportunities for new ways to add value to our customers’ lives, increase their level of activity and ultimately enhance returns to our shareholders.

We believe that sub-Saharan Africa offers a large and growing addressable market for our expanding portfolio of products and services. It is poised for sustained growth as the disposable income levels of African consumers improve on the back of a growing working age population and middle class, urbanisation, and improving access to services such as electricity, mobile connectivity and smart connected devices, and financial services. Our aim is to capture this opportunity by offering a suite of relevant products and services that pivot around our core pay-TV subscriber base.

How we performed in FY23

  • Increased 90-day active subscriber base by 1.7m YoY (+8%) to 23.5m
  • YoY growth in South Africa, particularly in our active subscriber base, came under pressure due to the challenging economic environment and devastating impact of loadshedding on consumers and businesses
  • Our Rest of Africa business, however, continued to show strong growth in a challenging economic environment as the team continued to execute well while leveraging a broadly successful FIFA World Cup
  • Increased our DStv Rewards base to over 1.3 million members

Looking ahead

  • Continue to deliver net growth in our subscriber base despite a challenging consumer environment
  • Enhance our overall consumer value proposition through customer value management to support our retention efforts, particularly in the maturing South African business
  • Continue to develop entertainment and consumer services that compliment and support our core video offering to support customer acquisition, churn, activity rates and ARPUs

Enhance our ecosystem of scalable, tech–based consumer services

While our core video entertainment business continues to grow and generate free cash flow in aggregate, we are looking to develop future revenue streams by investing in opportunities that are consumer-focused, leverage our scale and local advantages, and are underpinned by technology. We are well positioned to develop and support a compelling ecosystem of consumer services in sub-Saharan Africa given: our scale and distribution capabilities; our reach of over 23m households across 50 countries; our proven track record of delivering video entertainment services over nearly 40 years; our investment in enduring relationships with customers and suppliers; our ability to manage in-country regulatory, language and cultural nuances; and our established payment collection capabilities where we have an unrivalled ability to process over USD200bn in annual payment transactions through over 200 payment partner integrations in over 40 markets in sub-Saharan Africa.

We have already made material targeted investments in select areas with high growth potential such as KingMakers (sports betting), entered into equity joint ventures such as Moment (fin-tech and payments) with strategic partners in market segments outside of our core competencies and made incremental investments in complimentary areas like Namola and AURA (on-demand emergency response services). We have also concluded value-enhancing partnerships e.g. in broadband service provisioning (e.g. DStv Fibre and DStv Internet) and will continue looking for more opportunities that fit our investment/capital allocation criteria to further expand our ecosystem, add value to our customers’ lives and create shareholder value.

How we performed in FY23

  • Successfully negotiated the creation of the Moment joint venture with Rapyd and select venture capital partners, notably General Catalyst, Entrée Capital and Raba
  • Added fibre services to our DStv Internet broadband offerings by partnering with wholesale providers like OpenServe and Vumatel
  • Purchased Namola, an on-demand emergency services app with a consumer facing app that we have started to offer into our customer base

Looking ahead

  • Support the KingMakers service in launching in South Africa in FY24 under the SuperSportBet brand and in maintaining strong momentum in the Nigerian market
  • Bed down the integration and launch of the Moment business and help it to scale thereafter
  • Execute on targeted investments in our focus verticals, and pursue additional partnerships where those create a better customer experience and create mutual value

Maintain operational excellence and sustain cost reduction

Our aim is to deliver positive operating leverage through time – keeping the organic growth in our cost base below the organic growth in revenue, thereby driving margin expansion for the group. We continuously strive for operational excellence and optimising cost efficiencies across our business. From time to time, this may require some upfront investment as we redesign certain critical systems to support our future business requirements and customer needs. We are also scaling our analytics and AI capabilities, focusing on improving customer experience, driving revenue, enhancing content discovery and reducing costs.

How we performed in FY23

  • Exceeded our cost savings target of ZAR0.8bn by delivering savings of ZAR1.3bn for the year
  • Delivered organic operating leverage of 0.39% for the group, despite an extremely challenging operating environment
  • Delivered an improvement in Rest of Africa trading performance of ZAR2.1bn (ZAR2.8bn organic), returning our Rest of Africa business to trading profit breakeven in the 'medium-term', in line with the commitment we made at listing

Looking ahead

  • Target additional cost-savings, particularly to support the maturing South African business through an increasingly challenging period (ZAR0.8bn target for FY24)
  • Drive further improvements in our Rest of Africa trading margin to support our free cash flow breakeven target in FY24
  • Deliver on key milestones for our technology modernisation programme, which should largely be completed by end FY24
  • Evaluate cost savings opportunities as we approach our next transponder lease renewal cycle

Pursue global digital platform security leadership

Our Technology business, Irdeto, is one of the leading companies globally in providing digital platform security, content protection applications and cybersecurity solutions for the media and entertainment industry. Our aim is to drive growth, scale and increased market share through new customer wins and enhanced product offerings.

The world of connected industries presents a significant range of possibilities for manufacturers, consumers and those with innovative new business ideas. While our initial focus is on providing security solutions in the connected transport sector, we see opportunities to create, incubate and grow new businesses in other segments such as connected healthcare.

How we performed in FY23

  • Secured four tier-one customer wins in Media Security
  • Invested GBP5m for a 12% equity stake in Bidstack, a listed entity operating in the in-game advertising
  • Continued to launch innovative new products across our business units, including the Irdeto Super Aggregator Solution to support OTT and hybrid services for video operators, downloadable content protection in gaming, and Irdeto CrossCharge to support safe and efficient electric vehicle charging

Looking ahead

  • Restructure the maturing Media Security business to support sustainable performance and new opportunities
  • Drive further market share gains in Media Security, including development of more nascent market segments such as streaming and gaming
  • Target growth opportunities in connected industry verticals in transport and healthcare