Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning. I am Maxime Saada, CEO of Canal+.
I'm Amandine Ferré, CFO of Canal+.
We are delighted to be with you today. Together, we will present the 2024 Canal+ full-year results. For those of you who remember, during our Capital Markets Day, I shared our ambition to become a global media and entertainment leader with 50-100 million subscribers. Today, Amandine and I will explain why, more than ever, we are on track to achieve this ambition, and we have laid the financial foundations to support this ambition. We will then conclude with a Q&A session. In 2024, Canal+ repeatedly demonstrated its ability to produce globally appealing content, beginning with cinema. We like to say we believe in Paddington, rightfully so. The adventures of our beloved bear broke box office records with $170 million of box office to date, becoming the biggest opening in franchise history and in Studio Canal's history in the U.K.
In France, Beating Hearts became Studio Canal's highest-grossing film ever in the country, with five million admissions. This movie, which has already been sold in 41 countries, particularly resonated with young audiences, and you know how the young are important to us, as one in three French viewers under the age of 25 went to cinemas to watch it. Listing all of the global successes of Studio Canal's movies lined up along the year 2024 would be quite long, but I would like to name a few: Back to Black, We Live in Time, and The Fourth Chapter of Bridget Jones broke box office records. And these successes illustrate Studio Canal's ability to commercialize its movies globally, even in territories where we do not operate.
StudioCanal's success also relies on its library, the number one worldwide of European features, which comprises 9,400 titles and a library that was enhanced with the acquisition of Orange Studio's library from Orange. We launched a new genre label that you can see on the right-hand side of this slide called Sixth Dimension, which is really dedicated to developing a genre that is very attractive in terms of box office and in economics, and we announced our first project, the reboot of Silent Night: Deadly Night, which should be released by the end of this year. Not only movies, but series, because as you may know, we released our first-ever global series produced by StudioCanal, Paris Has Fallen, which rapidly became a major hit on the Canal+ platform and had huge success on Amazon in the U.K. and on Hulu in the United States.
It will be followed by a season two that we're currently shooting in the U.K. When we listed, I mentioned our new focus on franchises and intellectual properties, and we are now developing a host of new franchises owned by Canal+ or owned by the Lagardère Group, such as new Evil Dead movies, a reboot of Escape from New York, and of course, the next live-action movie for Asterix, one of the most popular and revenue-generating characters in Europe. These are just a few of the examples. Cinema is the number one driver of subscription acquisition, retention, and satisfaction for Canal+, which explains why, in addition to Studio Canal's productions and numerous output deals signed with the U.S., Canal+ is the leading industrial and financial partner of cinema in every territory where it counts, most notably in France, in Africa, and in Poland.
In Africa, for example, where we strongly believe that many incredible stories are yet to be told, we have more than ever invested in successful local content. We are very proud that for the first time in our history, 27 movies, TV series, and documentaries supported by Canal+ were part of the official selection of the 2025 Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou. In France, we announced yesterday a new exclusive agreement with the French cinema organizations to remain the only pay-TV player in the country for the next three years to broadcast movies just six months after their theatrical release. This new agreement comes with better financial terms for the company. Amandine will come back to that, without having any negative impact on our value proposition, which remains the same. Again, the ability to broadcast movies, French and international, six months after their theatrical release.
Still on the content side, we successfully launched in 2024 a new pillar of our offer, unscripted pay-TV programs, which I really like because they are much more affordable than movies, sports, or series. With a few examples, and two here presented to you, but we had a number of successes in Poland as well and in other territories. In France, with Loup-Garou, which was a huge hit with 15 million views, and 27% of those views were with a demo aged under 24. And in Africa, we launched the Secret Story franchise with tremendous success as well. In sport, Canal+ confirmed its position as the leading largest broadcaster of Champions League and Premier League alongside Formula 1 and rugby's Top 14. We added Poland, Haiti, and Myanmar to our Champions League rights, and we added Poland and Myanmar to our Premier League rights.
As you may know, regarding rugby, we extended our agreement with Top 14 and Pro D2 until 2032. This is now our longest running right by far, and it is our second most popular right in France. We are very pleased to have extended our exclusive rights with the French Rugby League. 2024 was also marked by the acceleration of our super aggregation strategy. In this digital age, viewers are swamped with entertainment options, and they don't want to choose. At Canal+, we've heard them loud and clear, and we have adapted our value proposition to ensure they don't have to. With our finely tuned Canal+ platform, we provide our subscribers with access to content from third-party streaming services alongside our own. This positions us uniquely as a super aggregator in the industry.
In 2024, we added Max, Paramount+, and DAZN into the Canal+ platform, enhancing our value proposition, already strong with Netflix and Apple TV+. We actually went even further in the aggregation of cultural content, as Canal+ is now where video content meets musical content, since we launched a unique offer, a world premiere with Apple Music now integrated into our platform in France. This is a world premiere. Extending its strategy to make its comprehensive offering available to the widest possible audience, Canal+ signed multi-year and multi-territory partnerships with leading connected TV manufacturers: LG, Philips, Vidaa, and Samsung. All connected TV global leaders now have partnerships with Canal+. We are also immensely proud to be once more a pioneer when it comes to user experience, as in an unprecedented partnership.
We combine our innovative strength with those of Renault, another French leader, to make Canal+ content available for our French, Swiss, and Polish subscribers on Renault's connected vehicles. In 2024, as you know, we extended the scope of our activities and know-how with the integration of three new companies. I'm happy to say that all of them contributed positively to our results starting in 2024. Dailymotion, the leading European short-form video streaming platform with 400 million monthly active users, had thrived in 2024 with double-digit growth of its revenues compared to 2023. Same for GVA, the fastest-growing fiber optic telecom operator in French-speaking Africa, which also experienced double-digit growth of its top line in 2024 compared to 2023, and Amandine will come back to it. L'Olympia also had a record-breaking year with close to 300 shows in 2024. That's a historical number.
Most importantly, in 2024, we made significant progress on our ambition to reach 50 to 100 million subscribers. In Asia, Canal+ increased its stake in Viu, a leading Asian streaming platform, to reach 37.2%. In Europe, the group increased its stake to 29.3% in Viaplay, the Scandinavian leading pay-TV and streaming operator. And in Africa, of course, we have undertaken, as you know, the most transformative acquisition of our history with MultiChoice, of which we already own 45.2%. MultiChoice is the English- and Portuguese-speaking leader in Africa, and it had, at full year 2024, close to 16 million subscribers. It generated EUR 2.7 billion in revenues and close to EUR 300 million in operating profit, leveraging a strong portfolio of premium sports rights, third-party content, and unrivaled brands across 16 countries. Tomorrow, MultiChoice and Canal+ will benefit from the favorable macroeconomic drivers of the African continent.
The first factor, of course, is demographic growth. Africa, in our territories and MultiChoice's territory, has a population of 1.2 billion people today, and this number will grow to 2 billion by 2050. The second factor is economic growth, with GDP growth forecast at 4.5% over the next five years, and the third factor is the continued rollout of electricity in the coming years. The untapped potential is huge in Africa, with, as you know, a very low penetration of both pay television and OTT. This strategic move represents a pivotal moment in the group's history. Once completed, this acquisition will be the largest ever in our journey, and combined, the two groups whose geographical footprints really complement each other like the pieces of a puzzle, as you can see on the map, will have more than 40 million subscribers and become the undisputed leader in Africa.
Additionally, the combination of the two groups will create significant synergies across all territories, not only in Africa. Regarding the transaction itself, we have made significant progress. After launching our mandatory public offering in April 2024, we submitted joint merger control filings to the antitrust authorities in the countries in which MultiChoice operates. In February 2025, we also announced the potential corporate structure of the new group in South Africa, designed to comply with foreign ownership restrictions proper to South Africa. As the review of our file by the South African Competition Authority will not be completed before April 8, 2025, and we always knew that, we have decided to extend the closing date of our offer to October 8. I am confident to close the deal by this date.
Finally, we have started to work on potential synergies between our two groups to be ready to implement those synergies from day one once the operation is approved. Summarizing now, sorry, why we are on track to reach 50-100 million subscribers to become a global media and entertainment leader. We have achieved key content milestones from the success of our in-house content production to the extension of our super aggregation strategy. We have expanded our distribution signing partnerships with leading smart TV constructors and automotive manufacturers to deploy our offers everywhere. We have successfully integrated our new assets, Dailymotion, GVA, and L'Olympia, which demonstrate its strong 2024 performance. And finally, we made substantial progress on the biggest acquisition of our history, Africa's MultiChoice. I will now leave the floor to Amandine, who will cover how our ambition is supported by strong financials. Amandine, to you.
Many thanks, Maxime, and good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased to be announcing our first set of annual results today. In 2024, the group has delivered solid financial performance and achieved its financial goal, paving the way to increasing profitability and cash generation. Our revenue increased by EUR 226 million to EUR 6.45 billion. This represents a 3.6% growth compared to 2023. Our adjusted EBITDA, before exceptional item, reached EUR 503 million, a 5.4% increase compared to 2023. Our cash flow from operations stands at EUR 280 million, lower than last year due to exceptional item, as we anticipated. Our net debt level was much lower than a year before, at EUR EUR 825 million. Going now into more details. Our subscriber base is a cornerstone of our activity, as the group generates approximately 80% of its revenues from subscription fees.
This source of revenue is recurring and is less impacted by economic fluctuation compared to advertising revenues. Canal+ caters to two types of subscriber. First, retail subscriber, D2C, whom we serve directly and whom we contract with on platforms or via telco, with direct control from Canal+ over pricing and customer experience. Then, wholesale subscriber, who contracts with third parties and who helps us amortize our costs but generates lower RPU. Canal+'s clear focus is more on profitable subscriber, retail D2C subscriber. Our D2C subscriber base grew by 2%, benefiting from the high customer loyalty and our successful new customer acquisition strategy with targeted offers for under-penetrated segments and innovative distribution agreements with ISPs favoring retail subscribers. In parallel, we continued our subscriber base rationalization to optimize value generation and therefore decided to divest from some low-value wholesale partnerships with ISP.
Canal+'s total subscriber base reached 26.9 million subs in 2024, a 0.4% increase compared to 2023, despite this 3.4% decrease of our wholesale subscriber base, resulting from this new strategy toward D2C subs. France is a perfect illustration of this strategy.
Yeah, if we can just maybe focus on France a second, because, as Amandine said, it's really the strategy focusing on high-value subscribers is particularly crucial for our European segment, which, as you know, we have the ambition to make much more profitable. This segment includes the gross European subscription TV, ad-supported TV, and OTT businesses in France, Poland, Benelux, and Central Europe, as well as the FTTH business in the overseas territories. Maybe just to focus on France. You see here the evolution of our sub base on the left since 2012.
After a number of years of decline, we have been able to find growth again on our subscriber base for the past five years. 2024 was the highest year of growth over the past 15 years. All of this growth was on the D2C retail subscribers that Amandine mentioned. We were able to achieve this performance in spite of increasing a significant part of our base in terms of price and of ending contracts that we deemed unprofitable with the non-renewal of Ligue 1 and the end of our contract with Disney. Cost reductions on content, price increases to find value on our subscriber base, while focusing on direct retail customers and increasing our base by the highest margin in the last 15 years. Back to you, Amandine. Yeah.
So, this strategy that Maxime explained regarding France is particularly crucial on the European segment where the market is mature. This segment includes for us the group's subscription pay TV, OTT businesses, and traditional pay TV, DTT, IPTV, etc., in France, Poland, Benelux, and Central Europe, and some FTTH businesses in overseas territories. As we explained in this segment, our emphasis is on high-value subscribers focusing value over volume. And this led to a slight decrease of 0.6% compared to 2023, bringing the total to 17.24 million subs. Meanwhile, our retail base grew thanks to our acquisition strategy focusing especially on the younger generation. Additionally, our strategy to regain exclusivity on key sports franchises in Poland and Eastern European countries such as the Champions League contributes to this performance.
Looking at the revenue, despite the lower subscription figure, our focus on high-value subscribers translated into a revenue increase of EUR 91 million, +2%, reaching EUR 4.7 billion in 2024. In mainland France, most of the 2024 revenue increase was driven by the D2C subscription revenue increase. In Poland, the Pay-TV revenue experienced a double-digit growth, fueled by the upgrade of exclusive Champions League, some OTT growth in revenue, and sports rights of licensing. We also had a positive currency effect on the zloty. We are rolling out a similar strategy in Central European countries, reinforcing our premium content proposition. Regarding Africa-Asia segment, this segment encompasses our businesses in Africa and Asia, including Pay-TV services in more than 25 countries.
We also have GVA, our new asset that Maxime already explained, which offers broadband internet access through optical fiber networks, currently operating in 13 cities in eight countries in Africa. Regarding GVA, the entity continued to gain scale, with subscribers increasing by nearly 15% year on year. This growth came both by FTTH network expansion and successful commercial performance. Regarding the revenue, revenue increased by 3.5%, EUR EUR 82 million, to EUR 1.04 billion, driven by Africa portfolio growth in pay TV and FTTH. Our last segment now, content production, distribution, and offer. It includes Studio Canal, Dailymotion, L'Olympia, and Thema, our B2B content distribution activity. In 2024, revenue increased by EUR 105 million, plus 15%, to EUR 817 million. Studio Canal delivered strong revenue growth on all these businesses, as Maxime explained with the hit releases that we had. Dailymotion revenue continued to enjoy double-digit growth thanks to strong commercial performance.
Looking now at the world picture, our subscriber base increased to almost 27 million subs, and you have the segment vision here, the total revenue reaching EUR 6.45 million, plus 3.6% compared to last year. Looking now at EBITDA, we have solid financials thanks to the strong financial discipline. Total EBITDA reached EUR 503 million before exceptional item, an increase of EUR 26 million, 5.4% compared to 2023. Looking first at the Europe segment, the 2% increase of EBITDA is a 7% growth thanks to the continuous cost-saving plan and content portfolio rationalization based on data analysis of the customer base. As such, we ended our contract with the French Football League in May and decided not to renew the Disney deal. This will have a positive impact starting from 2025 in terms of EBITDA. Moving now on the Africa and Asia segment, EBITDA increased to EUR 260 million, representing a 20.8% margin.
The slight decline versus 2023 is mainly explained by some content cost inflation on sports. Content production and other segment EBITDA was up 17% to EUR 70 million, mainly attributed to the performance improvement of Dailymotion thanks to scale effect on revenue increase. Looking now at costs by nature, content costs were up 4.6% to EUR 3.9 billion, representing 60.4% of revenue, plus 0.5 point versus 2023. This increase is mostly due to investment on sports in Africa, Poland, and Asia. Secondly, to the increase in third-party platform costs with the full year impact of the Apple TV deal, the launch of Max in 2024, and before the end of the Disney deal in 2025 that will generate cost savings. And finally, the last effect is Studio Canal content costs that increased due to the box office hit releases in 2024.
At the same time, we do not have the benefit of decisions taken in 2024 related to our content cost reduction, such as the end of Disney contracts. Over time, we intend to continue our efforts to rationalize our content costs. We signed yesterday, actually, an agreement with the French cinema, which is a very good example of that and will create significant savings starting in 2026. Other costs were up by EUR 1.4 million in 2024. So, to improve our profitability level, we have launched operational excellence measures. We have worked on a new organization to maximize synergies. Maxime, if you want to.
Yeah, maybe just a second to come back on the changes in the organization that we put in place just a few days ago. We changed the roles of our management board, really, what we did.
Jacques Dupuy will now have a global role on pay television. He was previously in charge of our international operations, and now he will cover France as well, with the idea to have a transversal view of all pay TV activities across all Canal+ regions and to deliver faster synergies. On the content side, Anna Marsh will now have a chief content officer role, so she'll have a global vision of our content and be able to facilitate decisions between make or buy and accelerate our scaling strategy on content. In terms of functional roles, we also changed the hierarchy for all functions. All functions will now report to the function, the boss, one of them will be Amandine, for whom all of finance teams across Canal+ will report to.
The idea there is to share best practices, of course, but especially to focus on cash, which Amandine will come back to in a few seconds.
Second item, after organization, we systematically assess all our activities to improve profitability. Maxime explained our new organization is completely focused on that, and so we are taking many measures. We have a particular attention in our operation, especially in France. We use customer consumption data to optimize our content costs, and we already talked about that. We decided to not renew certain contracts because we knew from the consumption of our customers that it will be value-creating for the company. In Africa, we also decided to close our activity on pay TV in Ethiopia, but we are not profitable. At the group level, we initiated a real estate rationalization plan.
Third, we are improving the contribution of our new asset, GVA and Dailymotion. Last, due to the end of the C8 channel, we also launched the implementation of a workforce reduction process affecting 250 internal employees. These measures have been taken to improve our profitability from 2025, but have generated exceptional provision in 2024. As I just mentioned, some measures that we took to improve profitability may have impacted negatively our P&L, recorded in two exceptional item lines above EBITDA in the chart that you can see. As such, EBITDA was negatively impacted by EUR 122 million of one-off exceptional item in 2024. Those include EUR 82 million of restructuring costs, mainly related to the exit of the DTT and the end of the C8 channel. The process is very specific to France, and we are now in the negotiation stage with the workforce representative.
We will know more about the exact size and the pace of cash flow outcome related to the plan when the agreement will be signed with the representative. 2024 EBITDA, after exceptional item, stood at EUR 380 million. Let me go over the main items below EBITDA. The income from equity affiliates was a negative EUR 158 million compared to a negative EUR 104 million in 2023. This increase is due to increasing stakes versus 2023 in Viaplay, Viu, and MultiChoice, and due to the performance of MultiChoice, which was negatively impacted by macroeconomic factors, most notably in Nigeria and Zambia. Despite those performances, we are confident on our acquisition strategy and know that it's a wide one given the added scale and the synergy to be gained in the medium term.
In 2024, the provision for income taxes was a net charge of EUR 156 million compared to EUR 180 million in 2023, representing an increase of EUR 38 million. This exceptionally high effective tax rate is exceptional, primarily driven by the non-recognition of carried-forward taxes given the lack of fiscal integration in France in 2023. This is due to the IPO that occurred in December. We have obviously started working on a group tax consolidation in 2025, expecting first benefits from this year. Taking into account the above, the group recognized losses of EUR 96 million in 2024. Regarding cash flow, our CFFO in 2024 stood at EUR 280 million, an exceptionally low level, as anticipated in our guidance. I would like to say that apart from this exceptional payment, we are pleased with the structural progress made on cash generation by some of our operations.
Looking at the chart, exceptional item of EUR 15 million, so the first thing that you can see on the chart is the exceptional cash effect of the EUR 122 million of exceptional provision that we saw on the previous slide, most of it being non-cash in 2024. As for 2024 performance, net content investment decreased down to EUR 198 million, mainly driven by an exceptional concentration of prepayments in the second half of 2024, in particular due to the new deal that we have with the Champions League, on which we prepaid for the whole season during summer. As for potential payment related to the tax liquidation, as for potential payment related to tax liquidation that we mentioned in our guidance, actually, that did not take place in 2024, we are still in discussion with authority. Discussions are ongoing, and we will communicate on the outcome in due time.
Now, on the next slide, I would like to go over some of the actions that we have been taking to improve cash generation. The first step was a change of management.
Yeah, we reviewed the management incentive program for all managers who receive some bonuses and variable compensation, and we adjusted the targets so that the quantitative targets are now based for 50% on EBITDA and 50% on cash generation and cash management. This is the first for Canal+, and now all members of management will have a large share of their compensation based on CFFO targets starting in 2025.
Yeah, as Maxime was saying, we are completely changing the shift of the company to be focusing on improving cash generation. Regarding capital allocation, we are assessing all the activity, organic and non-organic, and screening them with a view on the enhanced cash generation.
We have also started to execute our new financial integration framework, which should deliver positive impacts starting this year. This constant focus on cash being at the core of every decision that we take. We are completely focusing on cash generation and cash conversion. Looking now at our debt profile, our debt level is much lower than it was last year due to the recapitalization from Vivendi due to the IPO. We are at EUR EUR 825 million debt level, which is a leverage ratio of 0.5, and we even improved our debt level compared to what it was in September when we disclosed figures on the CMD.
Want to cover dividends?
Yes. Actually, this is our first year, our first annual results, and we thought it was important to share the value creation with our shareholder.
We are committed to create value, and we decided to propose a dividend of EUR 0.02 per share with respect to this exercise to the board. It will have to be approved in our general meeting that should occur on June 6, and it will be payable on the 27th.
27th of June 2025.
Now, as Maxime mentioned previously, our ambition is to become a global media leader, and we need to support that with a strong financial discipline and a sound balance sheet. We also strongly believe that CSR considerations should be at the core of our operation. Indeed, we think that we have a particular responsibility to carry out this commitment. You have here a few examples of initiatives that we have been taking.
The group has launched a sustainable strategy to provide an inclusive and ethical workplace for our employees and operate a responsible framework in order to offer rich and impactful content to our audiences. So you can see a few examples on the slide. We are also conducting now a double materiality assessment, and we are setting out our SBTi targets. We are working to define a broader CSR strategy, which will be communicated in more detail later this year. Moving now to the outlook. So considering our solid financial and the action that we already took, especially toward cash generation and the improvement that we already see, we are looking to 2025 and beyond, and our forecast remains unchanged. Regarding revenue, 2025 revenue is expected to grow organically.
However, this growth will be slightly offset by the anticipated impact of the end of the free-to-air channel C8, the termination of the licensing sports contract, and of the Disney output deal that we already talked about. At the medium term and at constant scope of consolidation, we expect revenue to grow moderately until, of course, the completion of the potential acquisition of the MultiChoice deal. Regarding EBITDA, in the medium term, at constant scope of consolidation and excluding exceptional payment, we expect EBITDA margin to improve moderately until completion of the MultiChoice deal, as a result of cost optimization, operating leverage, and the expected transition to profitability of GVA and Dailymotion.
Regarding CFFO, at constant scope of consolidation and excluding exceptional item, we expect CFFO to return in 2025 at the level of 2023, which was EUR 315 million, and this is including the cost of the layoff plan in France of the 250% that we mentioned. This means that excluding this exceptional item, our CFFO will be significantly higher than that, around EUR 360 million. This will be led by our constant effort to structurally improve efficiency at our operation. In 2025, we will keep carefully selecting our content investment spend with no major outflow related to contract renewal. We also have kicked out our fiscal integration process. So this is before MultiChoice.
Thank you. Maybe to wrap up before we move to Q&A, I want to reaffirm that Canal+ is firmly on track to reach its ambition to become a global media and entertainment leader.
We have reached key milestones on the production and distribution side with global hits that we mentioned. We have successfully integrated new assets, Dailymotion, GVA, and L'Olympia, and we are making significant progress in our ongoing acquisition of MultiChoice. And we have the strong operational and financial foundations to carry out that ambition with close to 27 million subscribers across three continents, solid financials in 2024, and, as you know, a very limited debt level of EUR EUR 825 million. Thank you. Moving on to Q&A. Maybe I should start reading some questions that we have received. I'll start with the first one. Christophe Cherblanc from Bernstein. What will be the savings associated with the 2024 reorganization costs? How much recognized in 2025 and 2026? You want to cover that one, Amandine?
Yes, of course.
So as I mentioned, we EUR 82 million of reorganization provision taken in 2024, especially due to the C8 plan. The plan in France, it takes a lot of time, so the effect will be only partial in 2025. We will have most of the effect starting in 2026. Regarding cash, most of the cost should be in 2025, with a part remaining in 2026, but this is really depending on the discussion that we are currently having with the work organization, so it's difficult to be more precise as we still don't know. But for sure, we will have an important effect starting in 2026 and full effect in 2027.
Another question from Christophe Cherblanc from Bernstein. The Ligue 1 rights situation is a mess. Again.
It seems not having the rights has had a minimal impact on churn subs, while any investment would further push away Canal+ France break-even. Can you confirm Canal+ has no interest whatsoever in the Ligue 1 Rights, except in the distribution neutral mode if the LFP were to launch its own channel? I can confirm at this stage we have absolutely no interest in the Ligue 1 Rights. I can confirm that it has had marginal impact on our churn and our subs, and we see no reason to commit further investments than the one we have already done with a revenue-sharing basis with the DAZN and BeIN Sports channels today. We have made these rights accessible to our subs. Every one of our subs has access to Ligue 1 Rights, and so we're very, very fine with this situation. We don't intend to change it.
Another question from Christophe Cherblanc. Can you confirm Canal+ will have a tax group in 2025, I guess, leading to better tax rate optimization, prospective tax rate for 2025? That's a question. Prospective tax rate for 2025.
Yeah, so I already said that we are working on the tax consolidation starting in 2025, so we should have effect starting in 2025. Our level, I'm sure that you already made the math of tax in 2024 was an exceptional 71%. We should get back to a more normal tax rate in 2025. In France, the normal tax rate is 25%. We have an exceptional tax in France for all companies. It should be only for 2025, but should create some more points of taxes. And we also have a specificity within Canal+ is that we have double taxes due to our African countries where we do not recover some taxes.
Our tax level should be between 35% and 40% as normative.
Again, Christophe Cherblanc. Pricing. Press reports have mentioned adjustments on offers effective as of Q1. Does that apply only to new subs? If no churn, what would be pricing contribution to growth in 2025 in France and in other markets? I'm not sure we can answer the one of the pricing contribution to growth in 2025, but these price increases are correct, and they don't apply only to new subs. They apply to our base. It's a very significant portion of our base. Actually, three-quarters of our base in France, for example, has had a price increase in the last two, in 2023 and 2024, over the last of the two years, while we have been able to decrease churn, which explains the growth I showed earlier on the French subscriber base.
Moving on to Julien Roch from Barclays. Can you update us on the structure of the MultiChoice transaction? How much of license fees will you own? Will you do a similar structure to SCCP back in 2000 where you keep the cash flow of South Africa and pay the cost of license fees plus potentially a set level of profit? Well, that's specific. So the structure, yes, we will have. It is, in a way, in principle, it's actually, in fact, similar to the situation with SCCP in the 2000. That's correct. We will have less than 20% of voting rights. This is what really is expected to comply with the local authorities' regulations. So this is what I can say. And in terms of the cash flow, it's a little premature to answer that question.
We are just discussing these matters with the authorities because we need to have this scheme between the license code and MultiChoice South Africa validated, and so it's a little premature to discuss the cash flows today. Sorry about that. Another question from Julien Roch. You did not pay the expected EUR 130 million of VAT settlement and the EUR 40 million of CNC settlement. Can you update us on both? Do you expect to pay them in 2025?
So you're right, we didn't pay. We are still in discussion regarding the VAT and the CNC. Regarding the VAT, we have a guarantee over the 130, which was granted by a bank, and this was agreed by the French authorities. We are still discussing with them. We don't have any calendar on where we should pay, but for now, we did not have to put cash on this topic.
We still believe we are a television service and should not pay a 20% VAT tax rate like SVOD platforms. Question from Sami Kassab from Exane last year, you reported that profitability in France got close to break-even in 2023. Can you comment on profitability in France in 2024? That's one. You want to comment on that one? There is another one. Subscriber growth numbers in Africa and Asia look underwhelming. That's true. What has driven subs growth in this segment, and what type of subs growth do you expect in Africa and Asia in 2025? Maybe on profitability in France. It's close to 2023. We're not there yet, but as Amandine mentioned, we have taken on significant cost reduction measures that will pay off in 2025, 2026, and further. I think we can say that.
And we expect, of course, France to be profitable and to contribute significantly to the future profitability of the group. On growth numbers in Africa and Asia, do you want to comment on that?
Yes. Regarding the growth, you're right, the growth of subscribers is less than it has been on previous years. This is due to several factors. The first one is that we stopped our pay-TV activity in Ethiopia. The second one is that it's African, so at some point, you get to floors, and so we are still now at a floor, and we should recover growth. And the last one is due to the seasonality of African sports events. We had AFCON, so the Coupe d'Afrique des Nations, in January 2024. We didn't have one at the end of the year, and the figures that we communicate are the end of year.
And so we had a peak in December 2023, and we didn't have one in 2024, but we should get back to this growth in 2025.
We also had a lot of load shedding in a number of countries. I mean, it's always in Africa, it's always step by step, as Amandine mentioned, and we've reached a step. There were a lot of circumstantial events that we don't believe are structural. We know they're not structural because we're used to Africa. As I mentioned, we've been there for 30 years, so we know this happens. And there was a lot of load shedding issues in a number of our countries where we operate: Madagascar, the Republic of the Congo, and of course, Sahel, which is a complicated area right now. A question from Christophe Cherblanc from Bernstein. French Cinema Agreement, PNL impact.
So we, last year and the years before, the agreement was around EUR 210-EUR 220 million a year, and our new agreement is an average of EUR 160 million with an increasing amount. So it's 2025 is EUR 150 million, 2026 is EUR 160 million, and 2027 is EUR 170 million. So the difference between the EUR 210 or EUR 220 and the EUR 160 average is what we should get as a PNL impact, which will happen mostly in 2026 and the years after that because we actually pay movies when they are released theatrically. So this EUR 150 million will apply in 2025 for movies, French movies. I'm sorry, it's a little complicated that we pre-buy, but we actually pay them in 2026 when they are released. So this is when we will have the positive PNL impact of this new agreement. Christophe Cherblanc from Bernstein. How do you manage the ramp-up of GVA?
Should we expect progress towards break-even over 2025, 2026? And another question on Dailymotion. How far is Dailymotion from break-even?
Okay, so maybe first on GVA. Actually, GVA EBITDA significantly improved in 2024, and the EBITDA is not far from break-even. It's still a CapEx intensive because we are deploying fiber, so of course, it's generating CapEx, but we completely manage this CapEx spending depending on the pace that we want to have regarding the deployment. So we are completely looking at the GVA deployment with a capital allocation view and really focusing on being sure that we deploy at the right pace. Regarding Dailymotion?
Profitability is not a question on GVA.
No, no, for sure. And really, it's not losing a lot. Dailymotion, same. We already mentioned that Dailymotion has, as GVA, double-digit growth in terms of revenue.
Dailymotion, it's mostly a fixed-based cost, so you need to get big, and when you gain scale effect on your revenues, your profitability significantly improves. We are not far from break-even, and we don't give guidance, but we are very satisfied with the results of Dailymotion.
Conor O'Shea from Kepler. Given the best growth in subscribers in France for 15 years in 2024, despite price increases, is there scope for further price increases in 2025, 2026? I think it's very difficult to answer that question. As soon as there's an opportunity, we take advantage of that opportunity, but it depends on the environment, not only the macroeconomic environment, but also the competitive environment.
So it's difficult to give outlook on the possibility to increase prices in 2025, 2026, but I think with what I mentioned on 2023 and 2024, when we see opportunity to do that, we see these opportunities. Adrien de Saint-Hilaire from Bank of America. I know you don't specifically provide a guidance on EBITDA for 2025, but conceptually, shouldn't we see a really strong improvement given you have another six months of lower French football costs? French cinema investments are coming down. Closure of the C8 free-to-air station, discontinuation of the Disney+ deal, listing costs will also come down. Does the CFFO guidance? So maybe I'll let you answer that one first.
Okay, so the first one, Adrien, you're completely right. We have a lot of favorable effects. We still have some negative effects that compensate a bit those positive ones.
The first one is that we will have a full year of the Champions League, so the growth of EBITDA will be mitigated, and regarding the CFFO guidance.
Does the CFFO guidance assume you're going to have payments to make payments in relation to VAT?
Yes, we didn't assume, but we left to make payments for VAT in our guidance.
So no, the answer is no. Does the CFFO guidance assume you're going to have to make payments in relation to VAT?
We did not assume that we will.
MultiChoice, are you able to share any incremental details on performance numbers, i.e., EUR 350 million comparable to the EUR 503 you reported on synergies? No, we're not able to share any incremental details. I think what I can say on MultiChoice is that we are very confident, as you know, on synergies.
The performance of the company is tough, but we anticipated that performance. It doesn't question in any way our willingness to move forward. It just makes us even more motivated to make it happen fast. We have actually launched work on synergies with a consulting firm to be ready by day one, as I mentioned, and so but we cannot give more details on any performance numbers. We don't have access to those. And on synergies, it's a little early to do that. Of course, we're not able to share confidential information. It's just better saying it with the MultiChoice, so it's difficult to be more specific than where we are today on synergies and other types of pro forma. Jérôme Bodin from Oddo. Are you planning to invest the savings from French Cinema Agreement into other contents such as series? I can answer that one quickly. No.
We're planning to reduce our cost base. We've been very clear on that. This is the way, this is the path to improve profitability in France and Europe, so we will stick to that. Julien Roch from Barclays. Coming back on taxes, Amandine said 35%,40%. She did say that. Is that 2025 estimated, or is that medium term? Why so high in France? Sorry, why so high when France is 25%? I think you explained partly.
Actually, I would love it to be 25%, as you can imagine, but we have a special tax in France in 2025, so for sure, the tax rates for all companies will not be 25% in 2025. It will be higher than that.
We have an increase of taxes, and due to the non-tax recovery in some African countries, we cannot get tax back, so we are double taxed in some countries in Africa and in France, and so it gives an additional point of taxes regarding our situation.
Thank you. I don't know if there are any more questions. I believe there is one more question coming. just waiting a few seconds to get the question. Okay, we're done. Actually, there is no more question. Thank you very much to all. Thank you for attending, and we'll be glad to see you face-to-face in the upcoming meetings. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.