on Thursday warned of deepening full-year losses as it battles an increasingly difficult trading environment.– which is in the throes of being acquired by France’s Groupe Canal+ — said trading profit will decline by between 19% and 23% compared to the 2023 financial year, while the headline loss per share number will more than double.
“The group expects losses and headline losses per share to increase due to the negative impact of a weak macroeconomic and consumer environment, increased investment in Showmax, and the impact of the sharp depreciation in the Nigerian naira against the US dollar. This resulted in foreign exchange losses on the non-quasi intergroup loans with MultiChoice Nigeria of R3.6-billion ,” it said.
“The group’s expected loss per share has also been impacted by a once-off impairment of IT systems of R1-billion , due to a reassessment of business needs in the context of an extremely challenging operating environment,” it said, without elaborating.With all these impacts, including the forex losses, stripped out, the numbers are not nearly as grim.
“Group trading profit on an organic basis is expected to increase year on year due to inflation-led pricing across the majority of the group’s markets and cost optimisation outperformance,” it said. “However, after absorbing a R4.5-billion forex impact from weaker currencies against the dollar, trading profit on a reported basis is expected to be lower than the year before.” —