Canal+’s March 11, 2026 earnings call gave one of the clearest public views yet of what the company is dealing with in Africa after completing its acquisition of MultiChoice in late 2025.
The results show two very different positions inside the same business.
In French-speaking Africa, Canal+ reported one of its strongest subscriber years in the past 15 years. The base reached 9.7 million subscribers at the end of 2025, up from 8.7 million a year earlier. Management said that sports rights, including AFCON, helped drive part of that growth.
In MultiChoice’s markets, the picture was much heavier. MultiChoice lost 500,000 subscribers in 2025. Revenue fell 6 percent. Adjusted earnings before interest and tax fell 14 percent. Free cash flow was negative. Canal+ only absorbed MultiChoice into its own results for a little over three months of the financial year, but the pressure was already visible in the numbers and in management’s comments.
The company also used the March 11 call to say more openly what had gone wrong. Canal+ pointed to a mix of currency pressure, including Nigeria specifically, power supply problems, pricing decisions, weaker subscriber acquisition, and the collapse of Showmax. Showmax, which MultiChoice had relaunched in 2024 with Comcast technology and major new investment, has now been discontinued.
Canal+ says its response in 2026 will be a €100 million “Boost Plan” meant to restart growth in MultiChoice territories. The company pointed to four main areas: improving the content offer, simplifying pricing and products, lowering entry costs for subscribers, and strengthening day-to-day commercial execution. Management also said more than 1,000 new salespeople are being deployed across MultiChoice markets, while cost cuts are being made in other parts of the business.
One of the clearest points from the call was that Canal+ still sees satellite television as central across much of sub-Saharan Africa. Management said fixed broadband penetration across Canal+ and MultiChoice markets is still very low, which means streaming alone does not yet offer a mass-market path across the region. That point matters because it helps explain both the limits of Showmax and Canal+’s current emphasis on decoder pricing, distribution reach, and traditional pay-TV access.
The company also said it is working toward a more unified long-term streaming product, with the Canal+ App intended to play a larger role across Africa over time. It also confirmed plans for a secondary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in the first half of 2026.
Taken together, the March 11 presentation showed a company with deep reach across African pay-TV markets, a weakened asset in MultiChoice, and a 2026 plan built around repair, simplification, and subscriber growth. The harder questions now shift to execution: whether Canal+ can stop MultiChoice’s decline, how quickly it can translate scale into growth, and what this will mean for television and streaming across Anglophone Africa.
