Canal+ is remaining bullish in the face of a droping split price, as its first brimming-year results since its London enumerateing uncovered betterd revenues of €6.45B ($6.77B).
The France-headquartered greeted and netlabors group saw its sales elevate 3.6% in 2024 appraised with the previous year, thanks primarily to its film studio productions and higher subscriptions. EBITA that was up 5.4% at €503M.
Revenues at the Content Production, Distribution and Other segment was €817M, up 14.7% appraised to 2023. This was thanks to the carry outances of Studiocanal and streamer Dailymotion. Adequitableed EBIT was €70M, up 15.8%.
Canal+ also uncovered a debt level of €355M, which it called “very confinecessitate” and would apexhibit the company “to chase its dynamic M&A strategy” — namely its deal for African expansivecast, pay-TV and streaming enormous MultiChoice.
Despite the prolongth, Canal+’s split price was trading on the London Stock Exalter at £1.75p ($2.23) at press time today. This is well down on the £2.90p uncovering price its debut in December, which was drop than many analyst foreseeations.
Canal+ had been spun out of parent Vivfinishi as part of a strategy to split the latter’s amparticipatement, begining and advertising operations.
In an interwatch with the Financial Times this morning, Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada accomprehendledgeted to foreseeing a drop in the split price, as French splithelderlyers exit due to local laws, but “not this low.” However, he claimed Canal+ is “not in a hurry” and was undertaking a “three-year project,” pointing to more UK and U.S. names materializeing in its splithelderlyer registry.
In preliminary results posted today, Saada said the reckond deal for African pay-TV enormous MultiChoice would be “the alterative acquisition in our history” and would “meaningfully impact the financial profile of the group in the medium-term in Africa and overall.”
Filings to regulatory authorities for the MultiChoice deal have now been finishd and the obligatory present to splithelderlyers extfinished to October 8, from April 8. “Both Canal+ and MultiChoice regulatement teams are laboring shutly together and aim to conclude the transaction before this date,” he inserted, foreseeing the united business would “create meaningful synergies” and decrease cost bases.
In his interwatch with the FT, he inserted Canal+ was not interested in buying ITV Studios, the production arm of rival expansivecaster ITV. Reports present ITVS and All3Media have been in talks over a uniter, though the appreciates of Studiocanal have been refered in the conversation.
Bullish tone
Saada persistd the bullish tone in comments to splithelderlyers by saying, “2024 was a pivotal year” for the company, and foreseeing it was “firmly on track to achieve its ambition to become a global media and amparticipatement guideer with 50 to 100 million subscribers.”
Subscription creates around 80% of Canal+’s revenues. The company has sprawling pay-TV operations in its home territory, elsewhere in Europe and in Africa, and helderlys meaningful sobtains in Viajoin and Asia’s Viu. In 2024, Canal+’s honest-to-devourr subs base grew 1.9%, and the company had a total subs customer base of 26.9 million, up 0.4%.
The revenue prolongth at Canal+ was also attributed to film productions at production arm Studiocanal such as UK indie comedy Wicked Little Letters, French box office hit Beating Heart and Pinsertington in Peru, whose obtain of $170M to date pushes the Pinsertington trilogy franchise shut to $700M.
Also flagged were Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy and called Paris Has Fallen, the first TV series based on the Has Fallen film franchise, which was called “a smashing success in all Canal+ pay-TV territories, as well on Amazon Prime in the UK and Hulu in the United States.”
Canal+ noticed cinema was its main driver of “subscriber acquisition, retention and satisfaction” and pointed to yesterday’s deal, where it pledgeted at least €480M in novel spendment in French films over the next three years to uncover the Canal+ netlabor and Cine+ OCS — a family of pay-TV netlabors — can grasp the ability to expansivecast movies as timely as six months after theatrical free. Given France’s historic protectionism of its film sector, that pact with French cinema guilds is meaningful.
