MultiChoice Group Limited (MCG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the MultiChoice Group Interim Results Call. [Operator Instructions] Please also note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Meloy Horn. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We released our results for the 6 months ended 30 September, 2021, yesterday. And those of you who are registered on our database would have received our investor e-mail with all the relevant information. If you are not on the distribution list, the slides are available in the Investors section of our website under Latest Results. Our presenters on today's call are Calvo Mawela, our CEO, who will present the highlights from this period and a brief check-in on our strategy. He will also provide an operational update for our key segments. Tim Jacobs, our CFO, will then discuss the financials before Calvo wraps up with our outlook for the remainder of the year. We will then take some questions. So with that, let me hand you over to Calvo to start the presentation.

Thank you, Meloy. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining our interim results call. If you turn to Slide 3, I'll take you through the highlights from this period. Our business continues to execute well, both operationally and against our longer-term strategic base. We delivered 5% year-on-year subscriber growth despite last year's base being boosted by increased demand triggered by the initial COVID-19 related lockdown. Our Rest of Africa business crossed the 12 million subscriber mark for the third time, and we sustained strong momentum in our connected video business. We delivered our strongest organic revenue growth since 2016, up 10% year-on-year. Reported growth was, however, more muted at 3% as the stronger rand related to the dollar negatively affected the contribution of Irdeto and our Rest of Africa business upon translation. Trading profit increased 5%, even though we had to absorb an additional ZAR 1.2 billion in content costs, mainly due to deferred sporting events. The 26% decline in core headline earnings was driven by rand volatility, impacting our currency hedges, which Tim will explain later, while the 54% growth in free cash flow was underpinned by forecast working capital management. Our local content initiatives regained significant ground relative to the hard lockdowns in the prior year, and we produced 41% more local content hours. Our sports broadcast also jumped sharply due to a normalization in live sporting activities around the world. We remain focused on driving efficiencies as we pursued cost savings and adopted more effective ways of doing business. As a result, we cut cost by another ZAR 500 million and continue to drive our Rest of Africa business towards profitability. Finally, we expanded our ecosystem with the introduction of value-added connectivity services for our pay-TV subscribers, the launch of our initial collaborations with BetKing and the evolution of our SuperSport school initiative to the platform business. In summary, we are happy with our execution through a challenging period. We are also proud of the positive contribution we are making to the communities where we operate and are very pleased to have been named as 1 of only 3 African companies on Fortune Magazine's 2021 Change the World List in recognition of our support of the local content industries across our markets. But let me take you through a bit more detail in our operations in the next few slides. Turning to Slide 5. Our interim results tend to be more of a business progress update, but I would like to quickly remind you of our strategy, and what we are trying to achieve. We have often commented on the remaining opportunity in the linear broadcast space, especially in the mass market segment across the continent. We are, therefore, driving increased penetration through our traditional DTH and DTT video entertainment services. At the same time, the media landscape is evolving due to improved Internet connectivity and reduced data costs. And we are actively pursuing our business for this change. Although we enjoy some benefit of observing how markets are shifting overseas, we believe it is critically important to adapt ahead of the curve. This is why we have a strategy to develop a connected ecosystem. On the one hand, we have digitized the entire consumer journey, and on the other hand, we are creating a broader digital ecosystem in which our customers can engage with our services in an increasing number of ways. Whilst we are doing a lot of this organically, we are also looking at select investment opportunities where we can add value to our customers' lives by solving for their needs with scalable technology base missions. Our footprint and scale, combined with some unique customer insights, puts us in favorable position as we are able to partner with best-in-class operators, improving our ecosystem and strengthening our consumer value proposition. On Slide 6, we illustrate the sales we have taken since April to leverage our scale and reach in expanding our ecosystem. Our DStv and Gotv platforms seated the core of our business and provide the springboard into offering additional services. Over the past few years, we started expanding our ecosystem by launching services such as Showmax. And over the last 18 months, we stepped up the pace with several new product and service launches, some [indiscernible] and a few select investments. A great example of our organic expansion is the addition of financial services to our [indiscernible] insurance offering, which already pose more than 2 million customers. We recently launched a fixed wireless LTE product under the DStv Internet brand, all with the aim of providing customer convenience as a one-stop-shop especially when it comes to video entertainment. And to celebrate the evolution of our ecosystem and enhance long-term shareholder value creation, we are investing in scalable and innovative technology platforms. Following on our investment in BetKing, we acquired a 12.5% stake in Aura in October. Aura is a digital marketplace that enables anyone on its last to access the closest vetted private and public security and medical response need to their allocation. Aimed at the mid and mass market, Aura is already the leading marketplace of its kind in South Africa with over 200,000 active users on its platform and is expanding into the Rest of Africa. It dovetails neatly with our addressable target market, and we can see a clear path to helping them accelerate their growth path, whilst, at the same time, offering a value-added service to our customers. So with that brief overview on strategy, let me update you on our key operating segments. As usual, we will start with content and specifically with general entertainment on Slide 8. We remain focused on differentiating our offering by investing in local content. We have produced 2,692 hours of local content since April, up 41% from last year. This increase was driven by our strategic plan to ramp up in local content. During the period, our local content spend accounted for 45% of general entertainment spend, in line with our full year target. Our research suggest there is increased demand for local content. It resonates with our customers and attracts a higher proportion of viewership related to supply. This is what underpins our local content production strategy, and to capitalize on this trend, we launched 5 more local content channels, including an East Africa movie channel. As usual, there were no strategies of highlights when it comes to general entertainment content. We also agreed by the 2 crime documentaries, Devilsdorp and Strangers You Know, whilst we continue to break records with the latest season of Big Brother Naija. On the international content front, we negotiated shared hedging costs on a major studio deal and converted several smaller channel agreements into rand. We are also happy to announce that we have secured the Disney range of channels, which includes kids and national geographic channels until 2024. On the production side, there are currently 4 new co-productions in progress. We are also successful in leveraging popular Kenyan telenovela Selina for use in Ethiopia and Ghana, thereby driving production efficiencies without compromising on quality. But we are not only producing great content, we are seeing growing demand for our content from the international market. Over the past 6 months, we licensed 121 series and movies to the likes of Canal+ in France as well as some broadcasters in Australia and Northern South America. This is 7x more than last year and a testament to the quality of our production. On Slide 9, we provide an update on SuperSport. With the resumption of live sport came an uptick in activity on SuperSport, reflected in the number of live feeds and the broadcasting of our own production. We are also increasingly achieving the online and mobile space. Our SuperSport website has surpassed 14 million unique users, while our SuperSport App is approaching 1 million users. Our SuperSport Schools platform is growing from strength to strength. By embracing automated AI technology, and by leveraging our established brands and scale, we were able to create a growing community built around school sport that already features travel sporting codes. Finally, content renewals for this period included Serie A, the FA Cup, the European football championships and the new United Rugby Championship, which has been positively received since starting in August 2021. Turning to Slide 10. We move on to the South African business. The business continues to execute well strategically and operationally despite being impacted by challenging consumer climate. We launched in-mall kiosks and DStv container shops in rural areas in pursuit of remaining growth opportunities, particularly in the mass market. We also focus our -- on new products and service innovation to drive ARPU and cement our ecosystem strategy. Last year, we launched several new products and services and are pleased with our progress to date. We have activated more than 80,000 Explora Ultra decoders since its launch. This high-end product enables seamless integration of OTT services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and YouTube. Our data shows that more than 50% of these decoders are being used to access third-party apps, offering customers a consolidated viewing experience all on our own platform. This is proof of our content aggregator strategy at work. More than 500,000 customers signed up for DStv Rewards which offers unique experiences and benefits that promote retention and product usage. Another retention, too, our 12- and 24-month subscription contracts are gaining good tracks, with a further 100,000 sign-ups since April. We also sold 120,000 new insurance policies, a 1/4 of which relate to our new financial services product, while 130,000 unique customers added a movie bundle at some stage since it was launch. The recent launch of DStv Internet with our attractive bundle DStv and Internet offerings is expected to support retention and ARPUs going forward. We continue to strive for operational excellence. Some highlights for the period include a 3% improvement in our CSAT score, and the launch for in-house developed AI chatbot, T.U.M.I. As a global first, we are also proud to have introduced content recommendations on Zapper decoders that are not connected to the Internet. This will significantly enhance content discovery for our middle and mass market subscribers. On Slide 11, we provide our funnel update on the key performance indicators for MultiChoice South Africa. The 2% growth in subscribers came off an elevated prior base brought about by the initial COVID-19 lockdown, whilst offerability concerns and job losses weighed on consumers over the past few months. We remain optimistic about the recovery in growth over the second half of the year, driven by focal specific season campaign and a strong content lineup. The return of Rugby and other measures put in events serve to reduce the churn rate in our premium segment. But our high-end subscribers still declined by 5%, mainly due to affordability issues. We continue to look at ways of stabilizing the premium base. Recent initiatives included the introduction of to easy access to popular telenovelas as well as repositioning DStv premium as a contemporary lifestyle print. Our middle segment declined 1% and appears to be the market segment mostly affected by the economic pressures resulting from the pandemic. We will look to gain more traction in the second half of the year as the local and international football season ramp up. Blended ARPU declined by 2%, an improvement to the average 4% drop reported over the past few years. The partial recovery of commercial sector and price increases implemented in April served to offset some pressure brought about by the ongoing shift in mix towards the mass market. As the competitive period benefited from customers spending more time at home during the first and most sever COVID-19 lockdowns, some normalization in doing activity resulted in customer active days being somewhat lower this time around. On Slide 12, we move on to the Rest of Africa business. Our strategic initiatives to drive growth momentum so our Rest of Africa business raised 12 million 90-day active subscribers for the first time. Through our regionalization strategy, we are expanding our distribution footprint through our point-of-sale presence and our direct sales force side. By improving the quality and effectiveness of this distribution footprint, we are enhancing our ability to sell into the market and support our customers. We are also supporting our regionalization initiatives in other ways. For example, since we don't have a TTC network in Tanzania, we have launched DStv Poa to compete at the lower end of the market and have strengthened our local language lineup with the launch of Maisha Magic Poa and Mambo Moto. We also continue to drive digital payment. We have made online payments available in another 7 markets and are rolling out our new USSD service to 2 more markets. Our digital self-service strategy has seen increased adoption and engagement, helping both customers in terms of satisfaction in ease of use, and our business in terms of cost optimization and organizational efficiencies. As we turn to Slide 13, we'll share an update on our Rest of Africa key markets, where we're encouraged by some broad stability in exchange rates since our March year-end. We continue to deliver growth in our largest market, Nigeria, with the base up 12% year-on-year. Subscriber growth was driven by our content slate across sports and local content. And despite some challenges around liquidity, we were able to extract a large portion of the cash we generated during this period. We currently have USD, [ 107 ] million of cash and counting, USD 50 million of which is part of our normal working capital requirements. The tax matter with sales was widely reported on in the press. We paid USD 19.4 million on deposit and the Nigerian Tax Appeal Tribunal has set 17 November for the appeal of MultiChoice Nigeria to be had. FIRS is, however, appealing this ruling. As for the lesser matter relating to MAH, we will be appealing the unfavorable recent TAT ruling, which was based on a technicality rather than the merits of the case. We remain of the view that we'll find a workable solution to these disputes, even though it will most likely take a bit more time. Kenya remains a tale of 2 businesses. In DTH, the team leverage targeted customer offers, our comparing local content lineup and live sports events like Euro 2020, and the Tokyo Olympics to drive year-on-year subscriber growth, but competitive presence in DTT continued to negatively impact our GOtv live bouquet. The impact on revenues is, however, negated by the low pricing in this segment, which is around the $2 level. We are encouraged by some early signs of positive momentum in Zambia following the election of a new president. In Angola, the currency has stabilized year-to-date. We are in the process of reposting our local long-range offering for our Portuguese markets to improve our commodity position. In the rest of our key markets, we have seen good subscriber growth in 8 of the 9 remaining key markets. Our revised local strategy for Ethiopia is also bearing fruit, with the base maintaining strong growth of 173% year-on-year off a relatively low base and despite the political instability impacting negatively on our distribution plans. Brand out the discussion on Rest of Africa, please turn to Slide 14 for an update on the segment's key performance indicators. Our subscriber base was up 7% and it's encouraging to see our premium and mid-market basis recover as live sport return to our screens. Our premium base reflected growth of 9% driven by Canal+, while our mid base increased by 29%. Mass market growth of 4%, partly reflects some economic challenges as well as the cumulative pressure for customers at the lower end price points. Encouragingly, we are still seeing healthy momentum in DStv Family, Gotv MAX and Gotv Value. We have implemented inflation in price increases in the bulk of Rest of Africa market, with our Southern regions typically taking pricing in April and our Northern region since September. We have not yet received a regulatory approval for price increases in Angola, but our average price increase implemented in the first half equated to 7%. Blended ARPUs were up 5% year-on-year in dollar terms, benefiting from positive mix and pricing as well as improved activity rates. Premium ARPU in particular saw a marked uplift as consumers updated upon the return of iSport. We share an update on our connected video business on Slide 15. This segment, which provides streaming services under the Showmax and DStv brands had a strong start to the year. Monthly active users were up 33% year-on-year and our most critical metric paying subscribers increased 42%. As a result, we estimate that we have gained 3% market share since the last time we calculated it in December 2020. To facilitate ease of sign-up and payment, we have localized our offer [Audio Gap] market, bringing the total to 9. We are also working hard at converting DStv customers to Showmax subscribers through our ad-to-build functionality, which we rolled out to the Rest of Africa last year. Local content viewership is increasing rapidly in all our markets and delivering on this demand is critical to driving growth and retention. User experience and platform stability are also in current focus areas. We have made tangible improvements in personalized recommendations, sales functionality and buffering. We also continued to build our payment network through strategic partnerships. By making easier for customers to pay and by incentivizing them to make recurring payments, we are able to enhance customer stickiness and customer satisfaction. Slide 16 provides a view on some of the key developments in Irdeto in the half. Given it's international operations and diversified client base, Irdeto is more directly exposed to global trends and developments. The effects of COVID-19 continued to impact its project pipeline and more directly its customers in markets like India. Irdeto's OEM automotive customers are exposed to the global silicon chip shortage, which has curtailed production. Despite the challenges, Irdeto continues to deliver growth in U.S. dollars. The team has worked hard to deliver further market share gains by expanding its client base and developing deeper relationships with existing clients and added 2 additional Tier 1 clients so far this year. Its current market share is estimated at 18%, making it the second largest player globally. Outside of traditional media security, we continue to develop new business lines. There is a lot happening in the video space outside of traditional broadcasting and Irdeto is at the forefront of those developments, working with the lives of Amazon Web Services to develop cloud-based security services for Irdeto, it's content lines and with INVIDI to develop products that will support new revenue streams, such as targeted advertising for incumbent operators. To ensure ongoing traction, Irdeto is working hard on a number of exciting new verticals, including contactless rental solutions in construction, cybersecurity assessment tools in health care and remote cybersecurity management and systems updates for transport fleets. Finally, on Slide 17, we provide an update on BetKing, our investment in the fast-growing and high virtual spot betting space. To reflect this expanding opportunity set around entertainment and gaming, the business has adopted KingMakers as a corporate brand with BetKing as a sports betting brand. Our investments in KingMakers is at the group level and provides exposure to all the elements of the growth in this business. Following our initial 20% investment in October last year, we recently closed the acquisition of an additional 29% stake funded by ZAR 4 billion denominated debt. The capital that we are injecting is not going into Nigeria, where the BetKing operation is already profitable, but it's being used to fund the expansion of the group's products and footprint across Africa. The business of sports betting continues to grow at a rapid pace globally. And in Africa, BetKing is no different. For the first half of the year, the business generated a robust 78% growth in revenue, with profitability at breakeven despite investing in growing its management team, agent network and presence across the continent. SuperPicks, the group's first product collaboration with BetKing, was launched in Nigeria at the start of the 2021, 2022 initial premium league season and has achieved impressive user growth on a weekly basis. We will continue to explore opportunities to work together in bringing products and services to the market, which leverages our scale and KingMakers expertise. This concludes the update on our operations I would now like to hand you over to Tim to discuss our financial results.

Thank you, Calvo. We will start with our financial highlights on Slide 19. We produced satisfactory results in a period that had challenging comparatives due to COVID-19. And despite significant currency impacts on translation of our dollar-based Rest of Africa and digital businesses, we delivered strong organic revenue growth, driven by a recovery in advertising income and a solid underlying performance in the Rest of Africa. We expanded our margin despite absorbing some ZAR 900 million in deferred content costs and the nonrecurrence of ZAR 530 million in sports refunds that benefited us last year. However, core headline earnings was impacted by realized foreign exchange losses and ended down for the period. We still view this metric as our best indicator of our true earnings performance, but foreign exchange and hedging does create volatility in the numbers from time to time. Free cash flow saw meaningful growth and as a result, our balance sheet has strengthened. This provides us with financial flexibility to invest behind organic and inorganic investment opportunities as and when they arise. On Slide 20, we share brief financial synopsis of headline financial numbers. I would like to highlight that the percentages shown in brackets are the organic growth numbers, which excludes the impact of currency translation and M&A. We delivered 3% nominal growth and 10% organic growth in revenue to ZAR 26.8 billion for the period. This was the highest recorded organic growth rate since 2016. We recorded trading profit growth of 5% or 6% organically despite absorbing significant deferred content costs as mentioned. Core headline earnings declined 26% year-on-year to ZAR 2 billion, largely attributable to foreign exchange volatility, while free cash flow saw strong growth of 54% to reach ZAR 3.2 billion. On Slide 21, we start to unpack our revenue numbers in a bit more detail, starting with subscription revenue and subscriber growth. The graph on the left-hand side shows our 90-day active subscribers, with South Africa at the bottom of the stack and Rest of Africa above. The corresponding subscription revenue numbers are presented in the graph on the right-hand side. COVID-19 has distorted the comparative somewhat as the prior year subscriber base was elevated due to the initial COVID-19 lockdowns. Nevertheless, as Calvo has explained, the Rest of Africa business saw good subscriber growth, while growth in South Africa was constrained. As a group, we delivered solid organic subscription revenue growth of 7%, driven by a strong performance in the Rest of Africa. Growth was negated on a nominal basis by the translation of rest of dollars -- Rest of Africa's dollar revenues at an average rate of $14.45 versus $17.35 in the prior year. Subscription revenue in South Africa increased 2% to ZAR 14.6 billion, with price increases and an encouraging 64% recovery in commercial revenues offset by the ongoing shift in mix towards the mass market. The commercial business has not yet reached pre-COVID levels as COVID-19 regulations continue to impact the hospitality industry. The Rest of Africa business bolstered 15% organic growth in subscription revenue on the back of 7% subscriber growth, an average 7% price increase and an improvement in mix with the return of live sports. Turning to Slide 22. We look at our revenue trends by key buckets. Our DStv media sales team has delivered a fantastic recovery in their business following a very challenging comparative period. Advertising revenue of ZAR 1.9 billion reflected a 77% improvement driven by the resumption of sports programming and increased marketing spend as lockdown restrictions eased. Advertising revenue not only recovered, but grew 17% compared to pre-COVID levels as the business delivered higher sales related to local content and successfully implemented new digital advertising strategies. You will see from the graph that subscription revenue still comprises more than 80% of our revenue. Moving to Slide 23. We show a new chart to help unpack our revenue growth by segments in a bit more detail. We have presented both organic and reported revenue as the stronger rand reduced the revenue contribution of the Rest of Africa in the data one translation and negatively impacted reported numbers. However, as I have mentioned, organic growth of 10% is the highest we've achieved in our 6-year reporting history as MultiChoice Group. The strong subscription revenue performance in the Rest of Africa translated into 16% organic revenue growth, while our recovery in advertising boosted South Africa's revenue growth to 8%. Other growth was driven by a recovery in sublicensing revenues with a return of live sport. Technology revenues grew by 1% in U.S. dollars, impacted by the global silicon chip shortage and the effects of COVID-19 on project revenues and on set-top box sales in markets such as India. Slide 24 is also new, as we know that investors sometimes struggle to keep track of all the moving parts that have occurred due to COVID and the associated lockdowns. So this slide can serve as a reference point, but just to explain the key -- the 4 key points briefly. Last year, we successfully negotiated ZAR 550 million of once-off content refunds due to shortened leaves and impaired formats. In our interim results last year, we noted an amount of roughly ZAR 800 million in costs that shifted from the first half of financial year '21 into the second half. In our year-end results, we flagged an amount of ZAR 1.1 billion in costs that were deferred from financial year '21 into financial [Audio Gap] The majority of those costs, around ZAR 900 million, have been accounted for in the first half. Finally, we flagged the translation benefit we enjoy this period given the stronger rand in translating the content costs in the Rest of Africa segment. On Slide 25, we try to isolate the impact of the normalization in content costs on our target to deliver operating leverage through time. As you know, our target is to keep organic growth in revenue ahead of organic growth in operating expenditure. In this period, however, the nonrecurrence of content refunds and the absorption of additional deferred costs meant that our content costs rose by 26% organically. Our sales and marketing costs also normalized given the resumption of sporting events and a gradual opening up of our markets. Despite organic decreases in other cost buckets, this still meant that our overall organic growth and costs was higher than our organic growth in revenue. The impacts of the content cost normalization is expected to be less pronounced over the full year. On Slide 26, we provide a bit more detail around our cost-saving initiatives. As you can see, we are well on our way to achieving our target of ZAR 1 billion in cost savings for financial year '22, with ZAR 472 million savings banked in the first half. We overachieved relative to our target in the preceding 2 years, but would expect this year to be closer to our target. In terms of the nature of cost savings, our current year is tracking on similar lines to financial [Audio Gap] with content costs, the primary source of savings. In contrast to financial year '20, our set-top box subsidy savings have largely rolled through the base until the next generation of set-top boxes are produced. Going forward, we are specifically targeting savings in content rights and streamlining of business systems. These examples are on top of our perpetual group-wide push to improve efficiencies. Slide 27 provides a view on our segmental and consolidated trading profitability. Despite the normalization of content costs into financial year '22, we delivered an incremental 70 basis points improvement in the group trading margin to 22.5%. South Africa's trading margin of 35% is elevated and will normalize towards our target band of 30% to 32% for the full year. This is partly a function of distortions caused by COVID and partly a function of seasonally weaker margins in the second half of the year. We saw a similar dynamic play out in the prior year. Our Rest of Africa business also performed well despite the impact of deferred content costs, with the trading margin only 100 basis points weaker year-on-year. The data trading margin was particularly strong in the half due to an ongoing focus on cost cutting and some timing differences, to normalize lower towards the 30% level, but will depend on the product mix. On Slide 28, we show our standard trading profit bridge for the Rest of Africa. As communicated, the largest year-on-year delta was the normalization of content costs, which you can see here in the blue bar in the center of the chart. However, as you can see on the left-hand side of the graph, the Rest of Africa business delivered a strong performance in terms of subscriber growth, retention mix and pricing. The net effect of these dynamics was a 6% year-on-year reduction in trading loss before a marginal headwind from foreign exchange, so our trading loss worsened slightly relative to the comparative period. We remain confident in reaching our breakeven target next year, especially if our key currencies remain stable. Slide 29 shows core headline earnings, which declined 26% year-on-year to ZAR 2 billion despite a 5% improvement in trading profit. This was driven by movements in realized gains and losses on our foreign exchange contracts, which are recognized outside of trading profit. By way of example, on hedges for transponder leases that are recognized below the line and on content hedges that have matured, that remain on our balance sheet until such time as the content is amortized to our income statement. The strong rand during the reporting period resulted in the business having to book sizable realized EPC losses versus gains in the prior year. The impact on core headline earnings was a negative swing of ZAR 748 million. The group typically takes out these contracts after 3 years in advance, sometimes resulting in gains and other times in losses upon maturation. But that is, over time, this approach has proven to be effective in protecting the group against currency fluctuations. We provide more detail on the segmental results and the impact of hedging in the appendices to this presentation. Looking at Slide 30. One of the highlights of our financial results was a strong 54% year-on-year growth in free cash flow to ZAR 3.2 billion. The graph provides some insight into key movements. So starting from the left-hand side, in the comparative period, we generated ZAR 2.1 billion in free cash flow. EBITDA improved by ZAR 245 million at the back of a strong operational performance. We saw a positive ZAR 842 million movement rights for sports events that were paid in the prior year, but postponed due to COVID-19. Free cash flow was negatively impacted by the ZAR 24 million deposit placed on account with FIRS in order to proceed with our tax appeal in Nigeria. We also benefited from ZAR 183 million in lower capital expenditure, driven by the nonrecurrence of an ERP system replacement in the data and the translation effects of the stronger rand. Finally, we drove cash inflows through strong working capital management in inventory and payables. Turning to the last element of our financial update. We look at the strength of our balance sheet on Slide 31. Our cash and cash equivalent balance remains healthy at ZAR 7.3 billion after having paid out ZAR 4 billion in dividends to Phuthuma Nathi and MultiChoice Group shareholders in September. Our current cash holdings and our facilities of ZAR 4.4 billion, leaves us with total available funds of ZAR 11.7 billion. Within this balance is an amount of ZAR 2.7 billion that is subject to liquidity constraints, principally in Nigeria, where our treasury and in-country teams are managing the situation daily. We also have approximately ZAR 1 billion allocated to the prepayment of our working capital loan and the BetKing Aftersport. Speaking of which, our additional 29% stake in KingMakers, which was previously called BetKing, closed on the 29th of October. As Calvo mentioned, we have secured ZAR 4 billion in rand denominated funding that will be used to settle the ZAR 282 million purchase price at a hedge rate of ZAR 14.56 to the dollar. We believe that the cautious gearing is warranted as and when attractive opportunities like this one present themselves. It remains important to us to retain a sound financial foundation as we get the Rest of Africa business over the profitability line in the next 18 months. Our strong balance sheet allows us sufficient capacity to absorb shocks and flexibility to invest for future growth through organic and inorganic channels. This concludes our financial update. Calvo will now conclude with our outlook on the current environment and the year ahead.

Thank you, Tim. Looking ahead at the remainder of the year on Slide 33. We will double down on differentiating our content offering through our focus on local and sport. We will look for more opportunities to collaborate with KingMakers and also pursue select opportunities to further expand our ecosystem. We will leverage our festive campaigns to drive growth, and we'll continue to scale our OTT platforms. Together we look to increase its market share, both in traditional media security and connected industries. And from a financial perspective, we will be working hard to reduce our cost base by another ZAR 1 billion, and in the process, drive the Rest of Africa business towards the FY '23 breakeven target. That concludes today's presentation. We would now like to invite you to take the opportunity to ask some questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Jonathan Kennedy-Good of JPMorgan.

Just a quick one to go back to the content costs, and thank you for the slide on that on Slide 24. I just struggle to get a good sense of the base that we should be looking at for the year ahead despite the disclosed detail there. I think it's around ZAR 9 billion, but perhaps if you could just give us some more color on that, perhaps a simpler kind of view would be helpful. And then on the expansion into Ethiopia, I was just wondering how that operation is progressing? If you have some color on subscriber numbers growth and revenue and what do you think the potential market size is there, please?

Yes. Thanks, Jonathan. And I'll start with the Ethiopia question, and then Tim will respond to the content costs. And as we have reported, we have seen over 170% growth in Ethiopia, albeit starting from a low base how we have restructured the whole Ethiopia business in line with all the bouquet offerings, and our increase in local content, including our broadcast sponsorship together with KingMakers on the local league. We have seen very good traction coming through in Ethiopia. We are beginning to see us even struggling to meet the demand in terms of points of presence across the country, and we are increasing our capacity to be able to save this -- the number of clients as they increase rapidly. We have always said that Ethiopia is one of the key markets. I think outside of Nigeria in the Rest of Africa, it is the second biggest market. And that's why we have doubled down on our investment in this country. And we believe, long term, it's going to give us very good results. And that's why we believe very strongly that we should continue our investment in Ethiopia. Unfortunately, we can't share the full details at this stage because we are coming from a low base. And as we feel that it's -- we are at a stage where we can be able to share more, we should be able to share more especially with the competition that we are facing in Ethiopia. If you can just bear with us to build up momentum there, in the future, we'll be able to share more details around it. Safe to say that it is a very good market, and we are seeing good traction on our products.

Calvo, thank you. Can I answer the second part of that question?

Yes.

So I can give you directionally some assistance here, Jonathan. So I think the first thing to recognize is that in this first half, the content costs include ZAR 900 million of deferred costs from FY '21. In total, there were -- there was ZAR 1.1 billion of costs that were being transferred. So in the second half, we expect the half-on-half comparison to be ZAR 900 million in the first half absorbed and ZAR 200 million absorbed in the second half. Remember that in the way that our business works on a seasonal basis, the second half of the financial year tends to have slightly higher cost than the first half of the year. The split is normally 60-40, and content cost tends to follow that trend for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the football rights are in for a full 6-month period in the second half of the year, whereas, typically, they're only in for about 4 months in the first half of the year. And then, of course, we've got our seasonal trends and our seasonal content lineup that tends to also have an impact on the cost base. But if we think about what the second half is likely to look like, we think it's going to probably start to trend towards what we used to see historically, although you've got to make some adjustments for the additional one-off costs that has not yet been absorbed this year.

The next question is from John Kim of UBS.

When we think about growth in the Rest of Africa, and what you're seeing on underlying operational momentum, do you see it more as a case of progressing people to stay on the platform longer, perhaps upsell them to new content? Are you getting much traction on the DTT side of the subscriber base? How should we think about the premium mid-, low ranges of the market specific to the rest of Africa? Switching gears and talking a little bit about KingMakers. When you look at the opportunity from what you can see today, should we be more focused on Ghana or Ethiopia in terms of potential traction in the next 5 years?

Yes. Let me start and Tim, you can speak to -- you can also add. In terms of our growth part, there is no question about the opportunity in the Rest of Africa that there's still a huge opportunity. And we have spoken about our regionalized strategy since last year, where it's beginning to gain momentum, especially in Nigeria and hence, we have seen the positive momentum that has come through in terms of growth in Nigeria. And we believe we still have a long way to go in Nigeria to get to some of the regions that we have not even gone to. So we still believe very strongly that there is an opportunity for growth. And with football being one of the big areas that people are interested in, in places like Nigeria, which is at middle to premium level, we will always see people coming in, in the middle range and also then getting into the premium level to be able to see the lives of Champions League, which is at a premium level at Compact Plus. So we don't see that trend slowing down. We think we still have an opportunity for growth there. The low tier, which is where we face some regional players, free-to-air players, that is an area where there is still opportunity. We are able to compete and be able to attract customers. But there are instances where the competitors will also respond. And then we also have to follow through with responses or we will go fast, and they will respond. So that area is very competitive. But we think we still have enough ammunition to be able to compete in that region. Just based on the content lineup that we produce on a day-to-day basis, which will be able to put a product that will be able to compete successfully in that area. So we still see very good momentum in terms of growth in the Rest of Africa, especially with our regionalization strategy where we're going to petty and rural areas. On the KingMakers question, yes, KingMakers -- yes, Ethiopia is one of them. Ghana is one of those that also will be following. But 2 -- there are -- there is a 2-pronged strategy that is being deployed. There is one where we are making sure that, on the digital side, we are able to reach everybody. And so people that are playing in the digital area for them to be attracted to our platforms, and we are doing a lot of work in terms of having referrals on our SuperSport platforms, for instance, for people to be able to do that. It doesn't matter where they are on the continent. Then there is actual deployment on the ground in places like Ghana and Ethiopia. Those are the areas that we are getting on the ground and building a point of presence and actively then localizing the product to make sure that it speaks to the local nuances, and therefore, becoming relevant in those countries. And there are a few more that we are looking into, but for competitive purposes, we will not be able to share these countries are coming next, but you are on the right to a by picking up on Ghana and Ethiopia.

Yes. Calvo, maybe if I can just add to the Kingmakers comment. If you just think about how -- what countries they've penetrated, they've obviously been rolling out and focusing on Nigeria first. The second bigger market that they're focused on is actually Kenya. They've got a product that is in market being customized for the local market conditions. And we expect to see some growth in that market as probably the second market that's going to start getting some traction first. And then Ethiopia and Ghana are still at early stage. They will start to get some traction a little bit later on. But I think Kenya is probably the next market that's going to get quite a bit of focus on the KingMaker stable.

The next question is from Omar Sheikh of Morgan Stanley.

I've got 3, if I could, please. First one is for Tim. I also enjoyed the cost slide in the presentation, very helpful, but just kind of maybe wrap up the conclusion here. Could you maybe just confirm that you expect operating leverage in the full year to be sort of positive. So specifically, do you expect revenue growth to be greater than OpEx growth in this fiscal year? That's the first question. And then secondly, on Rest of Africa, again. I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying about the trends in the subscribers, the 90-day active subscribers. Would -- are you saying that there is a kind of a tailwind that you're seeing from the return of sports this year? And so does that mean that you're expecting -- if you look over the next 18 months as you move towards breakeven, would you expect the overall subs to -- subscribers in Rest of Africa to decelerate somewhat because you've got tough comps? Is that the kind of the sense that we should take away on the subscriber side there? And then finally, it's useful to have the growth numbers that you've given to Showmax and other online users through the presentation today. But can you just give us some sense of overall quantum of users for those -- certainly Showmax you've got some overall sort of sense of the quantum and size of the user base there? That would be very helpful.

Yes. Let me start and Tim will follow. Just on the online side, we have decided not to share the exact numbers at this stage just because of the competitive nature of this area, but we are giving an indication of how we are trading against our competitors. And this year, we are able to share with you that we think we have gained 3% market share against our competitors. And I think, if you can just bear with us also on this one, that we should hold back on giving exact numbers, but we'll be indicating to you the direction on which we see this area of our customers' moving. On the trends with regard to sub numbers, we are not anticipating a deceleration of our customers in the Rest of Africa, nothing so far indicates that there is a deceleration of our base. We think that with the regionalization strategy gaining momentum, with the festive season coming through and the content lineup that we have for the last half of this year and sports still being very attractive and very complicated and very top of mind in many of our customers on the continent, we shall still be able to continue to see positive momentum coming into the second half. The last question then on the operating leverage, let me hand over to Tim to address that.

Thank you, Calvo. So I'd just like to add probably 2 comments. Just to close off on Calvo's comments on the rest of Africa, just remember that what we're going to do is with the resumption of sport this year, that's obviously been nicely -- nice momentum in the rest of Africa. And then that flows into next year, which has the FIFA World Cup, to which -- for which we've got the exclusive rights next year. So we think that this momentum will carry into next year, and we'll see another good year coming from that FIFA World Cup. As you guys know, that once every 4 years, that tends to be a significant acquisition driver for us. And then on the issue of operating leverage for the full year, we are absolutely focused on trying to turn around that slight negative leverage that we're seeing at the moment and to get that back into positive territory. So that's a strong focus for the team for the second 6 months.

The next question is from Preshendran Odayar of Nedbank CIB.

Congratulation on the results. I've also got 3 questions, if I can. Calvo, the first one is just a clarification. You mentioned that some shows you are distributed with Canal+. Can you share your plans of any further collabs or increasing or distributing local content? And is that part of your potential cost-saving initiative from making more local content and reducing your overall content creation cost? The second, if you can expand on your arrangement with MTN South Africa. Is it just that you're buying wholesale data for fixed LTE? Or do you have ambitions to launch an MVNO in the near future? And the last one is I just want to go, where is the executive management team now physically located for MultiChoice? Is everyone in Dubai? Or do you have around in Nigeria or South Africa or anyone in Johannesburg?

Yes. Maybe let me start with the Dubai management. Actually, it's only me, Yolisa that are in Dubai. The rest of management, which is about 13, 15 people are based in South Africa. And then the way we run countries is that every country has got an MD in country nowhere else. So Dubai is a very small office that the Rest of Africa's corporate team decide. And as per our discussions with, we understood that everybody is concerned about the Rest of Africa is where it can be turned around. What we have seen over the years and through experience is that if you -- for instance, in my role, I am based in South Africa. You tend to be [indiscernible] to South African operations a lot because you are in there base on a day-to-day basis. With the edges of turning around the Rest of Africa, we decided that it's strategic for us to come and base some few executive members in Dubai where I'm closer to the Rest of Africa business. I've been able to fly in and out of the market as and when I see problematic areas in some of the markets. And I think it's playing out very well if you look at the progress that we have been making in terms of turning the Rest of Africa around. So we don't have a very big office. It's just a small office for us, so just in the Rest of Africa corporate guys and make sure that we can [Audio Gap] South Africa too. So that is the basis for us to be in Dubai, but it's not a big management team. Many of our executives are based in South Africa. On the MTN SA side, we saw an opportunity wherein we have said we are already interacting with people in their homes on a day-to-day basis. People trust us to come into their homes, to walk into their bedrooms, to do installations on TV. In many instances, as people are getting more online -- more and more online, we find that we could be a brand of choice to bring Internet into their homes. The way we think about it is, we do not buy really a whole sale. We buy -- we have an arrangement wherein we buy only for those that is -- rather we buy only what is required for us to on-sell to our customers. So it's an on-sell type of an arrangement wherein there is a product that MTN will have, we would agree on pricing between ourselves and themselves that we can be able to compete in the market, and then we are able to then on-sell this product on to our customers. And this way helps us a lot, instead of taking an MVNO where you buy a wholesale and then with the hope that we're going to on-sell all of it to customers, this is specifically the product basis and you only pay for only that once the wholesale prices that we used to have with the ISPs as they've done in the past. So at the moment, we have no plans to go to an MVNO. We are just at a reseller of an MTN product, but we have our inventory and we are able to make margins out of selling these products from MTN. And I'm sure there will be other discussions with other broadband providers in South Africa that might be interested in this type of arrangement, and they will be open to those discussions. On the Canal+ local content discussion, what -- the arrangement that we have with them is that we will have regular meetings and look at opportunities where we can collaborate, where it makes sense for them. For instance, in this case, where they like a particular storyline, and they think it can work in their French market, the all sub license that particular content and then go and play it out in the French market. Sometimes they just like the script, and they are going to do the production on their side in some of the markets that they operate in. In this way, I think we are able to monetize the content that we have worked hard to produce. We then get a traction from the likes of Canal+, but we have also seen some of our content getting traction even in Europe, as I've already said in our opening remarks. It also helps as part of our cost-saving initiative or you can look at it in terms of a revenue stream that we never had in the past. I hope that helps.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from Warwick Bam of Avior Capital Markets.

Three from me. How do you think about the potential to scale the Showmax platform beyond Africa, given its competitive price point? And then are you able to demonstrate whether your hedging strategy has been beneficial over the long term? And lastly, you note that the 10% organic growth in revenue from the Rest of Africa is the highest since 2016. You pushed through some price increases, which supported that growth. How price-sensitive do you believe the mass market is in the rest of Africa?

Okay. Yes. In terms of Showmax, actually, we do have a product that is available beyond Africa. And internally, we call it Showmax daispora. We have seen very good traction coming through, especially with Big Brother Nigeria. We have seen a lot in the U.K., in the U.S., many people subscribe and it's beginning to be an area of forecast for Yolisa, who runs the connected video business because what we are seeing with the people in the DAS product that they are still interested in watching local content. And those are people that will normally subscribe and never than think because of their disposable income. So there is a lot of work in reporting the make sure that we can take advantage of the diaspora out there, and it is accessible in countries beyond Africa. On the 10% organic growth and the pricing, we have looked at our pricing ability in many of our key markets. And we think we had a position where we are able to put pricing in line with inflation in almost all our markets. We have done so in the past financial year. We've put pricing through this financial year except for where the regulators have not approved where there is a requirement for regulatory approval. Our plans are still to continue with the price adjustment because we believe very strongly that we have really done a lot of work in terms of positioning our content lineup, we see it resonates very well, people see value in our product, and we think we are at a stage where inflationary price increases should be able to be absorbed by our customers, and we should not see a significant -- or a change in subscriber trends. But of course, we will be watching it very, very closely. There is a lot that goes before we decide on pricing. But so far, we believe very strongly that we should be able to continue to push pricing in line with in placing in all our markets. Did I answered all the questions?

Calvo, there was one more in hedging. Should I take that one?

Yes. Yes.

Okay. So I think clearly, in a period like this, when we see such a big swing from a positive last year to negative this year, it's always worth questioning whether or not the hedging strategy works. So maybe let's just give you a little bit of philosophical thinking first. And then I'll give you some specifics about how we test this. So firstly, we don't -- we are not in the business of FX trading. The one thing that we do not want our teams to do is to spend too much time speculating about what they're doing with currencies. Remembering that 44% of our input costs are on hot currency. And in particular, the rand is a volatile currency. So if we go back a year, a year ago, the rand was trading at 17 to the dollar. If that had continued at those levels, then all of these hedges would have been deep in the money. Having said that, what the reason that we take out these currency hedges is to give us certainty over our cash flows. These are all cash flow hedges. And what we try to do internally is we try and not to get distracted by the accounting requirement to mark these numbers at particular reporting periods. While they do create some volatility in the earnings, what we are trying to do is we're trying to get clarity on the cash flow movements, which are more important. And secondly, that allows us to also have a very clear strategy about how we need to manage the business, how much cost we need to target to take out of the business. The volatility on the spot rate is something that we can't control. So we try not to focus too much on that. Now having said that, we realized that over periods of time, we do get these swings. And when they go negative against us, of course, none of us like to see that. It's quite defeating when you've done operationally some excellent work in the business. However, what we do as part of a regular occurrence with the Audit Committee and the Risk Committee is that we do a back test. We did our last back test 3 months ago, where we basically go back over the last 10 years, and we go back and say, if we had implemented a -- for example, a spot strategy, instead of we adopted, what would have the outcome be? And every single time that we have back-tested this and we do this periodically, probably every let's say, 12 to 18 months, over the longer term, we have always been well in the money with our hedging strategy. So we continue to strongly believe that it's the right strategy for our business, notwithstanding that there are going to be periods when the results, for example, pop up as a loss. And if you just have a look, I mean, just simplistically, if you just look at the first half of last year and the first half of this year, last year, we made a profit of ZAR 417 million, and this year, we made a loss of $331 million. So if we just -- just the 2 periods compared like-for-like, we met almost $100 million better. So we still are absolutely convinced that this is the right strategy. It means that our teams don't have to speculate about how they think about the foreign currency component of input costs. And just to give a little bit more context, we've been utilizing the strength of the rand to top up that 18 to 36 month bucket. And already, what we're seeing is that the forward rolling average hedge position, the average cost is coming down significantly. So with this year, the forward -- the hedge rate costs are sitting at about $16.35. We're seeing that those forward rates, the blended for probably about $15.70. So we're actively managing to get that forward rates down so that the impacts are likely to be less as we move into the future.

The next question is from Edward Pienaar of Sanlam Private Wealth.

I've got 2 questions, please. The first question is just relating to foreign ownership of MultiChoice. Obviously, voting rights get rated down as to over 20%. Our renting rate through some of the legislation and in between falling asleep, I read somebody that nobody is allowed to own -- or no foreigners allowed to own more than 20% of the shares. Am I understanding that correct? So physically, you can't go over 20% of ownership in MultiChoice per law. Is it more in a few foreigners that is prorated down below 20%, but there's a hard limit in law at the moment.

Yes -- no. So there is a control part of things, and I don't -- it might be difficult to read it on the legislation. You can, from an economic interest perspective, own beyond 20%. But then when it comes to voting, you are restricted and prorated to the 20% as we have already said. So there is no restriction in terms of economic interest to buy beyond 20%. So anybody can buy above 20%, and I hope it clarifies that.

Okay. Perfect. That's good to know. Then my second question, just on hedging, Tim. I see that from FY '23, you guys are no longer hedging back from Rest of Africa, so basically your local currency exposures back to rand. What's the reason for that?

Ed, so thanks for the question. Yes. So what has effectively happened is that while Rest of Africa is sitting in loss positions, those hedges, in fact, are -- we have counter hedges in South Africa. And we're trying to become -- we're constantly looking at trying to become more efficient. So what's happening at the moment is that the hedges that we're taking out in the Rest of Africa have got an equal and opposite hedge in South Africa, and the 2 are negating each other out, but they're creating noise and leakage in costs. When Rest of Africa turns profitable at the end of next financial year, the expectation is that we would probably start to look at hedging because then the currencies are moving in a similar direction. So it's just because they currently in loss-making, when we do the exercise, there's effectively counter hedges that will counter each other out there, but it's costing us a net effect on both sides. So we are just trying to get -- we're trying to be more efficient there. I think if you want a more detailed explanation of exactly how that works, get hold of Meloy and the team and they'll take you through exactly how and why we do that. Why we've dropped it for now? But as I said, as soon as we get back into profits in the Rest of Africa, we're likely to start reintroducing the hedges again.

Okay. I'm going to speak sneaky. When you say profitable in Africa next year, does that include -- is that basically PBT profits? So your interest costs, ForEx losses, all of that profitable, profitable?

Trading profit. We're looking to get to breakeven end of next year, yes.

Gentlemen, we have no further questions in the queue. Calvo, do you want to make some closing comments?

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That concludes our conference call today. We hope you find our feedback useful and would like to invite you to reach out to our IR team should you have any additional questions or points of clarification. As a team, we believe we are well positioned to capture the opportunities ahead of us, and we remain focused on bringing our magic to millions of households across the continent. As we say goodbye, we would like to wish you well over the festive period and the very best for the new year ahead. Thank you.

Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that then concludes this event, and you may now disconnect.