MultiChoice Group CEO Calvo Mawela revealed that the company has embarked on a proof-of-concept to package and sell solar and battery energy storage products, in a bid to bring back subscribers who have ditched the platform after being frustrated by load-shedding.
Mawela said they have partnered with alternative energy importers and installers to test the concept. “We hope that will take off. We should be able to get a sizeable number of our customers taking this, and then that helps us.”
In the South African market, MultiChoice points out that load-shedding remained the most immediate challenge in terms of subscriber activity. The number of active days per subscriber declined by 5% due to a significant increase in the frequency and intensity of load-shedding, especially in Q1 of the reporting period.
The South African business had to contend with the effects of ongoing high levels of load-shedding as 43% of the days in the reporting period were impacted by stage 4–6 load-shedding.
Subscriber growth was also affected by a decision to remove 311,000 non-revenue generating customers — linked to special load-shedding campaigns — from the base.
MultiChoice
In its half-year results, MultiChoice reported that although it saw a 5% growth in DStv Premium subscribers for the first time in years, it lost nearly half a million subscribers in South Africa compared to the same period last year.
This is according to its 90-day active subscriber metric. It gained 70,000 in its Rest of Africa markets, bringing its net subscriber loss to 416,000.
MultiChoice noted that other macroeconomic factors, like high inflation rates, also affected households’ discretionary spending. However, the company said it could see a clear correlation between the stage of load-shedding Eskom implements and DStv subscriber growth.
Unfortunately, when people don’t have power, they don’t have power.
Calvo Mawela
Mawela said you could try offering subscribers discounts and deals, but they can’t watch TV if they don’t have electricity. In addition to experimenting with packaging and selling backup power products, they are also actively encouraging subscribers to switch to streaming services.
That way, they can charge their products at work, download stuff and be able to watch at home.
But we need to solve load-shedding as a country. It’s just not sustainable for us, and especially a country as big as South Africa, going through this pain for such a long time.
Mawela said he believes there is a level of urgency that’s kicked in from the government.
We hope that government, as we come up with [this] result, [that] they are able to see the impact that it has across all businesses in the country.
