Canal+ suffers 2024 earnings drop after C8 licence blow and forecasts 2025 revenue hit
French media group Canal+ posted a drop in earnings in its 2024 financial results and said it expects revenue in 2025 to also take a hit.
Maxime Saada
Canal+’s earnings before tax in 2024 were €60m (US$63.1m), down from €102m in 2023, leading to a loss of €96m after tax, compared with a €16m loss the year before. Operating income fell from €426m to €341m, while adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) slipped from €472m to €380m.
Canal+ said this was a result of a €122m cost in relation to exceptional items, a figure which stood at €5m in 2023. These items included costs related to reorganisations, such as the redundancy plan at free-to-air channel C8, whose broadcast licence was revoked last year by French media regulator Arcom, and litigation matters. Excluding exceptional items, adjusted EBIT grew from €477m to €503m.
Revenue, meanwhile, grew from €6.22bn in 2023 to €6.45bn in 2024, which Canal+ put down to its focus on a high-value direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscriber base through the delivery of exclusive content, including partnerships with major US studios and live premium sports events.
Revenue from its European operations rose by 2% year-on-year. In mainland France, growth was driven by D2C subscriptions despite the loss of Ligue 1 rights and price increases. Growth was significantly offset, however, by the end of the UEFA Champions League sub-licence to Altice Group in May.
In the French overseas territories, revenue remained almost stable in 2024, supported by strong growth in French Polynesia, despite challenging market conditions in Haiti and New Caledonia.
In Poland, pay TV revenue experienced double-digit growth driven by higher revenue from subscriptions, an increase in revenue generated by sports rights sub-licences and favourable currency exchange rates. The number of D2C subscribers remained stable, but overall subs declined due to the termination of a wholesale agreement during the year.
In other European countries, revenue increased slightly thanks to OTT subscription growth, stronger advertising performances and improved channel distribution.
In Africa and Asia, revenue rose by 3.5% in 2024 thanks to an increase in pay TV and GVA subscribers in Africa and the full-year impact of launches in new cities. Subscribers to its GVA service increased by almost 50% year-on-year. In Asia, there was a slight increase in subs, but revenue declined due to a higher share of wholesale subscriptions, which generate lower revenue than D2C subscriptions.
Revenue from content production, distribution and other sources grew by almost 15% in 2024, driven by a strong performance at the company’s in-house production and distribution arm Studiocanal and video sharing platform Dailymotion.
Canal+ said it expected overall revenue in 2025 to grow organically, but that growth will be hit and more than offset by the closure of C8 and the termination of sub-licensing contracts and of third-party content contracts in France, including with Disney.
In the medium term, the company expects revenue to increase moderately, until the completion of its acquisition of Africa’s MultiChoice Group.
It also expects its adjusted EBIT margin to improve moderately until the Multichoice takeover is completed, as a result of cost optimisation, operating leverage and the expected transition to profitability of the newly integrated assets transferred from former parent company Vivendi, which spun Canal+ off into a standalone company last year.
Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada said the company is on track to reach 50 to 100 million subscribers. In 2024, the company’s D2C subscriber base grew by 1.9% year-on-year, while its total customer base reached 26.9 million subs, up 0.4%.
Identifying cinema as the number one driver of subscriber acquisition, retention and satisfaction, Saada highlighted Back to Black and Paddington in Peru as two success stories in 2024 – a record-breaking year for Studiocanal in terms of both catalogue revenue and international sales.
The company also announced today that it has signed an agreement with the French cinema sector, under which Canal+ and Cine+ OCS will be allowed to broadcast films as early as six months after their theatrical release. The deal takes effect retroactively from January 1 and will run for three years.
Canal+ has committed to invest a minimum of €480m over the three years of the agreement and is also increasing its commitment to films with a budget of under €4m.
