Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the presentation on synergies from the acquisition of MultiChoice Group by CANAL+. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session through the phone lines, and instructions will follow at that time. I would like to remind all participants that this call is being recorded. I want to hand over to CEO, Chairman of the Management Board, Maxime Saada, to open the presentation. Please go ahead.
Hello, everybody. I am Maxime Saada, and I am the CEO of CANAL+. I'm joined today by Amandine Ferré, our CFO, and by David Mignot, who has recently been appointed CEO of the newly combined CANAL+ and MultiChoice business in Africa after leading CANAL+ Africa for over 13 years with great success. Welcome to this morning's update on the MultiChoice acquisition. As you know, we will give an update on the CANAL+ strategy on March 11, following our full-year results announcement. Today, we will focus on the two main reasons behind the MultiChoice deal. First, the African growth opportunity. We believe that Africa has enormous potential, and we intend to leverage our 30 years of experience on the continent to capture that potential. Second, the benefits that we can extract from our greater scale are now becoming a reality.
We are a truly global company following the acquisition of MultiChoice, and we can start delivering significant synergies at group level. We will provide details on the numbers in a few minutes. First, let's begin with the African growth opportunity. If you look at the countries on the African continent in which we operate, Sub-Saharan Africa, the population today is approximately 1.2 billion people, and it is expected to grow by a further 800 million by 2050. So that would represent a total population of over 2 billion people by 2050. The economic growth is expected to be, in the next five years, close to 5% on the GDP forecasts.
If you look at the electrification rate, another, of course, key performance indicator for us, it is today limited at 56% of the population, which means that approximately half of the population today has no electricity and no capacity to have television. But this rate is expected to grow very fast, and actually, it is growing very fast in just the last few years. When you look at the penetration of paid television, it is still very limited compared to much more mature markets at 32%. So there is a lot of room to grow there as well. And finally, the OTT penetration rate, so really, the competitive environment is very limited because we estimate that rate at less than 5%.
This is really a continent that is prime for growth on paid television, and we will now explain with David how we are in a perfect position to capture this opportunity with our track record, with our positioning on MultiChoice, and with our plans for the business.
Well, thank you, Maxime. So prior to the acquisition, as you know, CANAL+ was already a significant player in the African market, which complemented the strong footprint that we have in Europe. As Maxime said, I became CEO of CANAL+ Africa in 2012. Back in the time, in 2010, we had 400,000 subscribers in French-speaking Africa. And since then, as you see, our subscriber base has multiplied by more than 20. And today, we have around 9 million customers in French-speaking Africa, which means that we are today in 50% of homes that have electricity, and we have a 50% audience share of in-house channels. So when a household is connected to the grid, literally, one of the very first things they do is buy a TV set, and when they do, they want CANAL+.
Our goal is to maintain that 50% penetration rate as more and more homes access the grid. The other leader in Africa, MultiChoice, has also demonstrated its ability to grow on the continent, having more than quadrupled its subscriber base over 2010 and 2023. But nonetheless, and as you know, MultiChoice has not been performing as well as it could be over the past three years. For us, its decline was due to a combination of internal and external factors. MultiChoice markets have been struck by currency devaluation, inflation, load shedding, and so the commercial engine that had been run hot historically, as you can see from the previous decade of growth, decelerated significantly. The key point here and the reason why we are so confident on the potential of the business is its continued underlying strength. First, content and channel.
As with the wider group, we think about this in terms of local and global content, both of which are critical. We have over 100 local channels fully dedicated to the continental audience specificities, including super strong channels, brands like SuperSport, which you can't miss if you're in Africa. We produce local series and TV shows, which are key for domestic consumption in markets like South Africa, but also across the African continent as a whole. In total, we provide every year 10,000 hours of fresh local movies and series and shows in more than 20 languages. We develop this local content with creatives who have a deep understanding of their audience being strongly rooted into many African cultures and languages. In global content, it is important that we deliver partnerships and aggregation from the likes of Warner Bros., Universal, Netflix, amongst others.
What our subscribers in Africa watch is not so different from what our subscribers will watch in Europe. And again, we will be looking to really extend our partnerships as far as those collaborations are concerned, as we did with Warner Bros. at the start of the year, for example, and with Netflix onto our French-speaking Africa last year. In sport, as the African Cup of Nations just reminded us all, sport is huge in Africa, especially football. So we broadcast the AFCON across all of our markets in Africa, and we have the Premier League, Champions League, La Liga, Ligue 1, and much more. We also bring the NBA, the Formula 1, MotoGP to Africa. And critically, we provide the sports that are valued by local audiences, such as PSL or rugby in South Africa, or Basketball Africa League, and so on and so forth.
So sports rights are important in Africa, but they are important in different countries for different reasons, and it's of a great benefit to have a spread of them, as with all content in sport, you have to think both local and global. At least, we also provide a range of international channels like Discovery, CNN, National Geographic, and many other mainstream TV networks. But on top of content distribution, it's key. And at first, clearly, brand is important. We have a lineup of brands that are almost universally recognized in our territories, such as CANAL+ in French-speaking Africa, SuperSport in the English and Portuguese markets. You will see, as we develop the strategy going forward, how we are going to leverage the quality of these brands. And as ever, and for distribution, just as for CANAL+ in all of our markets, physical distribution is critical.
With over 32,000 points of sale, we are incredibly well placed to take advantage of the development of the African marketplace. When you take all of that together, it shows the size of the opportunity and why we are so excited with this acquisition. We mentioned the challenges MultiChoice has faced, and we have already identified and are addressing some points around the offering and the incentivization, which we believe will turn performance around quickly. We will provide much more detail on our return to growth plan in our strategy update in March, but for now, I would think about this in two stages. First, we will get back to growth by restarting the commercial engine. We've already relaunched the campaign for customer acquisition. Of course, by putting content with CANAL+, we are improving the offer, which was already very strong.
Our focus really is in bringing on new customers. We know how to do that, and we are bringing over the lessons we learned at CANAL+ Africa. Then, once we've got the basics in place, we can start to unlock the full potential of the business and build the foundation for the long term. I will talk more about this in March, but for now, I can say it will involve scaling up the work we are already doing in antipiracy, optimizing our marketing and advertising, and revamping the distribution model. Throughout this journey, we will see the benefits of our new greater scale. Now, let me hand over to Maxime.
Thank you, David. As David said, we will come back in March to give you more details on our plans for Africa. Now, we're going to cover the benefits that scale brings, starting with cost synergies. By pursuing our international growth and with significant organic growth in our geographies, as you know, we have been able to grow CANAL+ from approximately 10 million subscribers at the end of 2015 to close to 30 million by 2024. Following the acquisition of MultiChoice, that number grew to over 40 million, and it really now puts us in a very strong position to capture significant scale benefits, which I'll talk about in a moment. And we are now closer than ever to reaching our target of 50 million-100 million subscribers. Moving forward, we will be focused on organic growth and on delivering the synergies at MultiChoice.
But we also have the potential to accelerate our growth strategy through two other opportunities that we have covered in the past: Viaplay, the leading Scandinavian player, and Viu, the Southeast Asian OTT platform, which has approximately 15 million subscribers in Asia. Today, our truly unique business is focused, as you know, on Africa and Europe, where we have been present for decades. With over EUR 9 billion in total yearly revenues, we now have global scale, and we are the leader on our market in 40 countries. We are the number one. As a reminder, we completed the acquisition of MultiChoice back in September, really at the end of September. We took control on September 22nd. So it's been under our ownership for just over four months.
We made the decision not to do any due diligence prior to the acquisition so we could continue to buy shares of MultiChoice on the market. So we have been, since September 22nd, really, really focused on getting a grasp on the situation and identifying these potential synergies. As we have said, CANAL+ is perfectly positioned to capture Africa's growth potential in the coming years, and we also expect significant revenue synergies following the acquisition. But today, we believe that it is premature to give some insights on revenue synergies, and our main focus will be on what we know for sure we will deliver: cost synergies. Because we're going to cover cost synergies, of course, it is important for us to have an idea of the baseline and where we are coming from.
This is preliminary, and these numbers are unedited, but we wanted to give you a view of our estimate of the 2025 cost base combined for CANAL+ and MultiChoice. If you look at that cost base, it sits at around EUR 8 billion in total, with a very significant number one cost base, we've said this in the past, being content at EUR 4.6 billion. Again, this is a preliminary estimate. Technology and the other costs sitting at EUR 3.4 billion. You have here the total cost base of approximately EUR 8 billion, with most of it relying on content, and the second cost line is on technology. We will publish, of course, full year numbers in March and give, at that time, audited numbers and confirm that cost base. I will now take you through the synergies in more detail.
To be clear, we're not just going to be looking at cost synergies at MultiChoice level, but really at CANAL+ Group level overall on all our geographies, because we do believe that this acquisition enables us to generate synergies, cost synergies, for all of the group in all of our geographies, and not only at MultiChoice level and not only in Africa. I am pleased to say that by 2030, we expect to deliver a run rate of over EUR 400 million of EBITDA cost synergies before implementation costs versus the 2025 cost baseline that I just mentioned. All of these numbers, all of the cost synergy numbers, will be compared to the cost baseline of 2025. We expect more than EUR 400 million in cost synergies by 2030 for EBITDA.
Of course, 2030 is a few years away, and we will not wait until then to deliver synergies. By 2028, we expect to deliver over EUR 300 million in EBITDA cost synergies. And as soon as this year, 2026, we're looking at over EUR 150 million EBITDA cost synergies. These EUR 150 million are not hypothetical. They are a sure thing, and Amandine will come back to this in a moment. Of course, the implementation of those synergies will generate some one-off costs. Our estimates for the costs are approximately EUR 35 million for 2026, EUR 40 million for 2028, and EUR 20 million for 2030. Again, approximately the 2026 number we're more confident on. As you know, we have been focused on cash generation since listing, and we intend to make sure that these synergies become a reality cash-wise as well, not only EBITDA, but cash.
Amandine Ferré will cover those, and Amandine, over to you.
We will convert a high proportion of EBITDA synergies straight into cash, resulting in over EUR 300 million free cash flow after interest and taxes in 2030 run rate, over EUR 250 million in 2028, and already over EUR 150 million in 2026. To go into more detail, we have clearly identified and launched key initiatives to achieve these synergies and the expected timeline to realize them. First, content, which is, as you know, the Group's main cost line. We have already begun and, in some cases, concluded negotiations with sport and general entertainment rights holders. Some of the agreements that we have are multi-year agreements, and so we won't see all of the changes in the first year, but you will see a steady improvement across the period. Clearly, in terms of our internal content, we have much more control.
You will start to see us getting the full benefit earlier than that. To give you some example, we looked at whether we should stop some external channels on specific topics and instead create our own channels, and so have the benefit from lower cost generated by that. On the tech hardware and broadcast infrastructure side, where most of our suppliers are common within MultiChoice and CANAL+, for example, cloud, satellite, dishes, set-top boxes, we got straight to work on negotiation and already get significant benefits. On the group tech infrastructure, that will take a little bit longer, partly because we need to evaluate what are the best systems and the processes to implement, for example, when it comes to CRM, cybersecurity, CDM, production tool, financial system. And so it will be only in the later phases of integration that you will see the full benefit of convergence.
But we do expect to see significant scaled benefits here. We have already this strategy in place within CANAL+ for years. To give you a concrete example, we developed the CANAL+ app for France at first and then expanded it to French-speaking Africa, Poland, and Eastern European countries over the years. We are also working to find a solution on Showmax, which, as you know, has been losing a lot of money over the last few years. On the OpEx line, when we are talking about group function, the first thing to say is, as always, that scales bring a lot of advantages regarding procurement. And we are already seeing that, and you will see some savings ramping up over time. On broader marketing, again, we do expect savings, but they will be toward the back end of the period.
On financing costs, you already saw that we had a very successful bond issuance back in December, and we also refinanced our bridge loan also in December, as well as some of the MultiChoice debts with better conditions. That means that our financing costs are significantly lower going forward. Finally, there will be some structural support cost savings that will appear over time. I'm really pleased to say that although we only completed the acquisition of MultiChoice as of September, we already clearly identified and secured EUR 80 million of cash savings, and that will flow through in 2026. That was possible because we have anticipated the synergy work stream ahead of the acquisition to be ready for day one, to be able to deliver as soon as possible. To give you a few examples, we secured better terms of some content deals on both sport and general entertainment.
From day one, we started negotiating with tech suppliers to improve conditions. As I just mentioned, we also refinanced the MultiChoice debts at the CANAL+ level in November, generating close to EUR 20 million in cash savings. We are confident in our ability to deliver these synergies because we have put together the right organization, systems, and processes to make sure that it will happen. The cost synergy plan that we present is ambitious, but we are positioned to deliver it. First, Maxime made sure that we have the right people at the right place. We've already got the key group function working at the global level. All local functions have a reporting line at the global level. To give you some examples, our head of sports acquisition, who successfully negotiated the Champions League for France a few weeks ago, is now also in charge of the MultiChoice sports acquisition.
Same for third-party content deals, such as the Warner deal that we announced a few weeks ago. They are now all managed globally by our Group's Chief Content Acquisition Officer. Secondly, David has put in place a diverse unified management team in Africa, taking the best of both teams, CANAL+ Africa and MultiChoice. And you will already start to see Africa becoming a more important part of the group. Third, I have put governance structure in place to ensure that we have a clear oversight to make sure these synergies are delivered. We put in place two teams: a synergy tracking office to ensure monitoring of synergies and make sure we leave no stone unturned, and an integration office to implement and drive the implementation. Now, back to Maxime.
Thank you, Amandine. In conclusion, we are very excited and very comforted by what we have seen at MultiChoice since we have taken over the company. In 2026, this year, we will be able to deliver over EUR 150 million of EBITDA and cash savings. More than EUR 80 million of these cash synergies have already been secured, more than half. By 2028, we expect those EBITDA and free cash flow cost saving numbers to have grown significantly to more than EUR 300 million on the EBITDA side and EUR 250 million on the cash side. We're very confident that by 2030, we'll be delivering at least EUR 400 million in EBITDA cost savings and over EUR 300 million in free cash flow run rate savings.
I hope that this short presentation has given you some insight into the potential, the incredible potential for the combination of CANAL+ and MultiChoice. With that concluded, Amandine, David, and myself will be delighted to answer your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you are dialed into the call and would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone handset. That is star one if you wish to ask a question on the phone. We will pause for a moment to assemble the queue. We'll take our first question from the line of Nicolas Langlet from BNP Paribas. Your line is open.
Hello, good morning, everyone. So I've got three questions, please. First of all, we are doing the 2025 guidance for the EUR 550 million EBITDA pre-MultiChoice consolidation. Are you able today to provide an updated guidance that includes MultiChoice? Secondly, on Showmax, are there any cost synergies related to the specific platform? And MCG management expected breakeven by 2027. Does the consolidation with CANAL+ help accelerate that timeline? And finally, can you update us on the underlying momentum at MCG over the past two quarters as the subscriber trend stabilized? And if the subscriber base continues to deteriorate, how does that impact your ability to deliver the EUR 150 million synergies in 2026 and the EUR 400 million by 2024? Thank you.
So thank you very much. The sound was not perfectly clear, so please, I apologize in advance if I don't, and if we don't answer exactly your questions, but I believe the number one question was, are we in a capacity to give updated guidances? And we are not. We are not ready to do that. We are in a capacity to confirm that we will exceed the guidances that we will reach the guidances. The second question was about Showmax, and I can confirm that we are in advanced discussions with Comcast, but, and I cannot, of course, comment on these discussions. What we can say is that we are fully confident in our ability to reach you today.
The third question was about the business of MultiChoice, and I will let David comment on this, but to answer your specific question about does it have any negative impact on our ability to deliver the synergies, the answer is clearly no. It has no impact. We will deliver the synergies no matter what. David, do you want to comment on the last few months?
Yes, thank you, Maxime. Just as I said during the presentation, it's part of the phase one. So obviously, it's a first priority to get back to growth on the MultiChoice footprint. We have already filled some gap. Cannot comment more on numbers, but it's on the process too, and combined with growth on our legacy perimeter. So yeah, we are filling the gap and getting back to growth, but it will take a little bit of time.
Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Silvia Cuneo from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. I would like to ask a couple of questions. The first one is on the growth potential for Africa that you mentioned in the press release. Just wondering, and you partially touched upon this in the prior answer, what sort of growth do you need to deliver these synergies? It sounds like it's not really related to that. So can you talk about what could drive more upside potential in terms of growth you would like to put in place? And then second question on the synergies mix, interesting that you mentioned some of these synergies would come also from other countries within the portfolio. So can you give us a rough idea of what percentage of the synergies is from Africa versus rest? Thank you.
Thank you very much. On the first question was the growth potential in Africa, and we will cover that aspect when we come back in March with the full year announcement and we do a strategic update on CANAL+. And David will go into much more details about both how this growth will translate into subscribers for us in the next few years and how he and the team plan to achieve that growth. So we won't give much detail today, but what I want to highlight is that the synergy numbers that we're sharing today are exclusively cost synergies, and they do not include revenue synergies. And of course, we do expect revenue synergies because, but as David said, it will take time. And we don't want to share numbers until we're fully confident in our ability to deliver the synergies, and we're not ready yet to do that.
On the second aspect, which is our ability to generate synergies outside of the MultiChoice perimeter, we are not ready to share a percentage today, but what I can say is that the majority of synergies will happen in Africa, but not exclusively. Our numbers include significant synergies outside of Africa. Why? Because a big part of the synergies come from the fact that we have global contracts, and we will have more of those tomorrow with either content providers or tech providers. These content and tech providers, of course, operate all over the globe and all over our geographies. Since the cost basis of the European business of CANAL+ is higher than the ones in Africa, then obviously, there will be significant impact on the cost base of our European businesses as well.
Thank you.
Your next question, caller. I'm Conor O'Shea from Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is open.
Yes, thank you. Thank you for taking my questions. Good morning. First question, just on the starting point for margins' operating profit for MultiChoice under harmonized accounting policies, I just want to be clear, are you saying that you're not in a position to give that today, or was that the comment on a break-even target by 2027? Just to be clear on that sort of pre-synergies, what kind of number we might be talking about there compared with the numbers that were in the bond presentation for the first half of 2025 for MCG standalone? Any information on that would be very helpful. Second question, just in terms of the cost synergies, Amandine, you mentioned the structural costs would take a little bit longer, the cost synergies to come through. Are they included in the 2030 target? And just generally, in these synergy targets, are they gross synergy targets?
Are they net synergy targets? Obviously, you have to recruit subscribers at the MultiChoice end, and that involves additional costs. And then the last question, just more general, just to understand the MultiChoice footprint and the competitive dynamics. Does the proposed merger of Netflix and HBO Max have an influence in competitive dynamics in English-speaking Africa in that footprint there where more U.S. content is consumed? Thank you.
Okay. So on the first question regarding the starting point of MCG, we publish combined figures and the figures of MultiChoice with the same accounting rule as CANAL+ in the bond issuance that we publish in November. We are not yet ready to present the full picture of MultiChoice for 2025. We'll publish the figures on March 11th, so you have to wait a few weeks to have the full year figures. And as you know, MultiChoice used to publish figures based on end of March figures and not end of December. So there is a huge work from the team, and we are not ready yet to provide the figures. This is the first thing.
Regarding the synergies and the cost synergies, the support synergies that we expect are going to come by the end of the scope going to 2013 that we give, but we expect to have the full blast in 2030, so it's not additional ones. Just to be clear on the synergies that we provide today, the cost synergies, we are still working on the revenue synergies, and David's teams are fully involved on that. So the cost to get back to growth and generate a new subscriber on the acquisition cost for that is not included here. We are only focusing on the cost synergies that we'll be able to have thanks to this acquisition.
Okay, so it doesn't include the extra cost for subscribers.
No, no. In terms of revenue.
No, but we won't incur any costs that don't generate more revenues than the cost. When you want to increase your top line, we will do it in a way where it generates profits. Otherwise, we won't do it. It's not about increasing the revenues. It's about increasing the profits, just to clarify.
It's profitable growth that we expect, so it's not additional impact over time.
Well, no, sorry. It's never good when some of your potential competitors consolidate because they grow bigger, and so they have more power on the market. But it so happens that the three companies you mentioned are very long-time partners in the past and for the future because we have secured very long-term deals with all of them, with Netflix, with Warner itself, and with Paramount. So we don't expect any negative impact, either short or medium term, with these guys. And as you may remember, we just signed a deal with Netflix, introducing them for the first time, bundling them with CANAL+ for the first time in French-speaking Africa. David is rolling it out as we speak.
So we are actually extending our partnership, and you may have seen that we renewed our partnership with Warner just at the end of the year for a number of years in English-speaking Africa in the MultiChoice territories. So we have a very strong relationship with all of these players, and we don't expect any adverse impact from the merger.
Okay, very clear. Thank you.
Your next question from Christophe Cherblanc of Bernstein. Your line is open.
Yes, good morning. So I had three questions. The first one was on the synergies. I'm struck by the speed of year one synergies. So does it include you're pulling the plug on some projects? And can you confirm you're keeping the same footprint? That is, you're not going to exit any non-South Africa market? That's the first question. The second one is on the delivery of synergies. Should we expect that to show up 100% at group level? Will you allocate some of the synergy to the South African subsidiary where you have some minorities? And the last one is on FX. In the past, you had FX MultiChoice had FX exposure. So is there a way for CANAL+ to reduce that exposure or, let's say, better manage the risk? I saw that Amandine was mentioning improvement in financing costs, which is good.
Is there a way to improve or reduce that FX risk? Thank you.
On the first one, you may remember we explained that prior to completing the acquisition, we launched to work six months before, headed on our side by Marc Heller, on their side by Tim Jacobs, their CFO, with work streams, including managers from both companies, sharing no confidential information, of course, but getting ready to identify the synergies that we had to launch day one. So we were very ready. And when David Mignot launched his organization, when we took control on September 22nd, and David Mignot put in place his management team, which, by the way, we assessed with a third-party company, and David Mignot chose the best of both teams and ended up with approximately half of the management from MultiChoice and half from CANAL+.
All of these managers had been involved with David in the action plan that David wanted to launch day one and that we launched at group level day one to generate the synergies. And so we immediately, for example, I'll give you one example. On content, we immediately wrote to every content provider in Africa for MultiChoice to signify that we would not renew the contracts and that we had to negotiate the terms. And so we launched negotiations all across. And the first synergy was actually achieved by Amandine and her team on refinancing. And that's a significant one. Maybe you can come back to this one. But to answer your specific question, there is absolutely neither change in perimeter. It's exactly the same scope. And maybe David can complain on that. And there is no plan to exit countries of the perimeter. It's exactly the same perimeter.
For example, on the Warner agreement, the channels, it's exactly the same channels that we renewed. Although there was a lot of speculation that we would lose these channels, we ended up signing a new contract with exactly the same channels. So to the full benefit of the South African consumers. David, you want to comment on the scope and the perimeter?
No, absolutely. It's a fixed- cost business, as you know, and my view is like there is no small market. So it's even the opposite the way around. As we speak, we are very busy assessing all and every country and inside countries, all and every areas of the country in order to reaccelerate the global penetration on the footprint. We've done that historically on the French-speaking with great success. So I would say even it's the way around. We are assessing how we do reaccelerate on some second-tier part of the footprint.
On the synergies, I also want to say that, of course, we are focusing on, as I said, global or multi-country providers, either on content or on tech. And so it should not affect any kind of African content. On the contrary, David is looking at how to invest. And he has been significantly, consistently increasing our investments in Africa to strengthen the local content part, as he mentioned in his presentation, which is critical. And on your question at what level will we do synergies, there will be at every level. So group level, but also African level. And I cannot share the detail, but of course, some will happen over there as well.
And regarding the impact of the FX changes, of course, we cannot pretend that we won't have any, but what we can do is to have a better coverage thanks to our scale effect. MultiChoice, being a South African-based company with a limited footprint, it was more difficult for them to have a good coverage in case of those kind of issues. We are currently working to improve that to limit the impact if we were to have some major change.
Would you expect a major benefit from that?
We did not consider that yet because it's very difficult to predict some impact on the exchange, but it will protect us in case there are big changes in the weights. As you know, we will be having a strong exposure to two different countries, Nigeria on one side and South Africa on the other one. So we need to be well covered on those.
I must say we are experiencing an improvement cycle on currency. As you know, you are referring to Nigeria. I think what we are seeing is that the situation on the currency and the Forex in Nigeria has improved dramatically for the positive of some other actors than us, by the way. So we are more, I mean, we are not only covering like 40 countries, we are able to balance the risk, but also, I must say that from the ground, we are experiencing a much better situation.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question from Ben Shelley from UBS. Your line is open.
Good morning, guys, and thanks for taking my questions. I've got a couple on Showmax and then a broader one as well on Africa. So am I right in understanding reducing Showmax losses are included in the synergy target? If so, how much of the synergies are coming from Showmax loss reductions, and then how are you planning to reduce Showmax losses? And then my other question is, I guess Africa is a very exciting growth market, and other peers might think the same. Can you provide a view on how you expect competitive intensity to fare going forward? Thank you.
You had two questions, correct?
Yes.
Yeah, that was all.
Thank you. On the first one, how? You said how and then how much, basically. Showmax. Showmax is not a commercial success. It's quite obvious. And Showmax, there were a lot of dedicated investments on the marketing side, on the content side, on the technology side. And we are in a position to reduce those investments. And so yes, they are included in the synergies. And I won't say how much, but it is significant. The important thing is that, as David has kept saying and will keep saying, it's about growth. So we are very careful when we take this kind of approach to make sure we don't lose potentially valuable subscribers.
Although we are very quick at assessing the investments that we believe are required and those that are not, we are also very cautious on the top line not to significantly impact or negatively impact the top line. That's the only thing. Otherwise, it would be really like a Band-Aid that we could scratch, and we're not going to do it that way. Still, there was so much investment there that we had a lot of room to improve the economic situation of that aspect. I cannot give any detail, especially because, as you know, it's a JV. Out of consideration for our JV partner, I don't want to give any more details.
Competitive landscape.
Competitive landscape. I will start, and David will complete. What we plan to do there is to, and by the way, MultiChoice has already started, is to make sure that our potential competitors are also our partners. We don't expect the competition to be, well, there are some countries where there are some local players, and David can comment on that. But most of the competition will probably come from the same players that we are now, we have a very strong relationship with in all the mature markets like Netflix and Disney and others. What I can say is that it's not necessarily very easy for these players to succeed there.
If we look at one of them, I don't want to pinpoint on one of the players, but a big platform, a very big platform whose name starts with A and finishes with N, has pulled out from South Africa in terms of producing content. They were very aggressive a few years ago, not anymore, and from other countries in the scope of MultiChoice. So I think that we don't expect more intense competition than we do in other mature markets, especially because David has made sure both in French-speaking Africa and now in English-speaking Africa that our position is very, very strong, actually much stronger than what it is and what it was in France or Poland when Netflix showed up, to be honest.
Thank you, Maxime. Just to complete, I mean, we're talking a lot about the platforms and Netflix and the OTT, etc. Just keep in consideration that the vast, vast majority today of the footprint is still not connected to the broadband internet. Out of the grid, households connected to the grid, more than 90%, 95% of the households still not connected to fiber and broadband limited access. O n that footprint, the competitive environment is there. There are some free-to-air, there are some local players, there are some piracy, but quite still compared to what we knew. And the second thing is on the growing broadband connected market, as Maxime said, we do have an extensive portfolio of content, especially African content, and our strategy is to be in a position to partner with this gigantic platform, and this is what we are doing.
Also, it's a lot about distribution, David, in Africa. Maybe you can just come back to that.
No, you're absolutely right. I mean, and even on the OTT side, there is no direct debit. There is almost no direct debit, almost no credit card or PayPal. So one of the key know-how to address the African market is to be able to collect the cash, which is going through dozens and dozens of means like mobile money, mobile banking, but also largely on physical collection of cash. And it goes through an extensive physical distribution network, which is at 32,000, as I said, and even more if we're just talking about cash collection. And that ultimately is quite a complicated thing to duplicate.
The final point is that, as I've said before, the launch of Netflix in mature markets, especially Netflix, but other platforms as well, has actually increased the headroom for us, increased the addressable market because they have convinced people who are not willing to pay for content to do so. And in France, they doubled the market size, really. It was pay TV penetration in France before Netflix showed up was approximately 30%, and it's now at 75%. So it makes it much easier for CANAL+ then to convince people who are already paying for a subscription to either add or substitute with CANAL+. So generally, just like in other businesses, the development and deployment of platforms helps because it grows the market for us.
Makes a lot of sense, guys. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from Jérôme Bodin from ODDO BHF. The line is open.
Yes, good morning all. Just two or three questions. The first one in terms of countries, so I have understood that you are not planning to exit any countries, but is there any opportunity for new countries? So you made Ethiopia in the recent past, but so is there some opportunities or is there still some no-go zone for you in Africa, especially on the north? That's my first question. The second one, can you remind us your commitment in terms of staffing with MultiChoice in terms of restructuring of staff? Because I guess that the staff reductions are quite limited in the synergies envelope. And lastly, on GVA, so if GVA will expand to the MultiChoice perimeter, just to be sure, it's not included in the EUR 400 million synergy envelope. Thank you.
I can take two and three with Amandine and David if you want to take the one. Please .
No, no, no. Sorry. So we have an extensive coverage so far. T hat's really, really everywhere. But what we saw, there's still some room to deploy some distribution networks massively inside some countries, which are super big countries, because sometimes you say you're in a country, but you're actually only covering the main capital city, and there are some situations like that. So that we are addressing, again, in a no small market and no small area policy. And there are also, again, some countries that have been treated as second tier, not prioritized in the history, and we have exactly the opposite way of doing. We believe in a no small country approach. You have to be everywhere. And so there are some countries where definitely the penetration rate is quite low and could easily get back to significant numbers.
That will be providing some growth to the platform. Yes.
We never say no to, including North Africa. The conditions are not there today. We reassess the conditions, like David said, every once in a while to see if there are opportunities to expand.
Yeah. No, I was going to answer the other question on the GVA expansion. It's not considered in the plan that we just presented.
On the commitments on staff reductions, the commitment is not to reduce staff in South Africa, so exclusively South Africa, if I may remind you that MultiChoice is in 16 countries, over the next 3 years. That's the commitment. And so it does not really impede our ability for the 5-year. But you are right in estimating that the majority of synergies is not staff-related. As you know, the costs of CANAL+ Group are mostly, as I mentioned in the presentation, covered by content and technology. I'm not saying that there will be no staff reduction, but this is not a significant lever in the numbers we gave.
Many thanks. Thank you.
Thank you, Jérôme from ODDO.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone. Your next question from Eric Ravary from CIC CIB. Your line is open.
Good morning. Thank you for the presentation. I have one last remaining question about the split of the synergies, targeted EUR 400 million between content and technology. Could you give us another magnitude for each of them? Is it proportionate on their take of the total combined cost or more technology, for example? Thank you.
We did not provide the splits, but it's really a mix between the two. I cannot give really more figures than that.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
There are no further questions. That concludes today's call. Have a nice day.