Openview adding nearly 22,000 activations per month – MyBroadband

Remgro released its annual results for the year ended 30 June 2024, which show that eMedia Investments’ has made significant progress in migrating its analogue TV customers to its Openview set-top boxes.

However, the results also show that eMedia Investments’ contribution to Remgro’s headline earnings has declined significantly.

Remgro said the eMedia Holdings subsidiary saw a marked increase in set-top box activations.

“eMedia Investments is campaigning for analogue consumers to migrate to Openview due to the uncertainty of the imminent analogue switch-off,” said Remgro.

It added that activated Openview set-top boxes had reached 3,428,523 by the end of March 2024, representing an increase of 262,062 set-top boxes in one year.

This works out to just less than 22,000 activations per month.

However, eMedia Investments’ contribution to Remgro’s headline earnings declined by 13.1% to R113 million, down from R130 million in the previous financial year.

Despite its reduced contribution to headline earnings, Remgro says the eMedia Holdings subsidiary reported satisfactory results despite continued load-shedding for a large portion of the reporting period.

“eMedia Investments reported satisfactory results given its mitigation against continued load-shedding,” it said.

Remgro added that the load-shedding experienced until 26 March 2024 hurt overall viewership and television advertising spending. It also forced the company to burn diesel during bouts of load-shedding.

eMedia Investments’ revenue declined by 2.1%, which it attributed to the impact of the actors’ and writers’ strike in Hollywood at the start of the financial year. The strike had a severe negative impact on income from international film productions.

In monetary terms, eMedia’s revenue declined by R60 million from R3.12 billion at the end of March 2023 to R3.06 billion at the end of March 2024.

In its financial results for the year ended 31 March 2024, eMedia said the Hollywood strike severely impacted one of its subsidiaries, Media Film Service, which made R31.5 million less in profit after tax than the previous year.

It also noted that its legal battle with MultiChoice meant it spent R8.8 million more in the 2023/24 financial year than it did in the year before.

Remgro notes that eMedia Investments’ advertising revenue increased by 3% despite a roughly 1% decline in advertising spend.

At the end of March 2024, the broadcaster maintained a prime-time audience market share of 33.5%, down from 34.5% the year before.