Afrigather Canal+, the French pay-TV large owned by Vivendi SE, has made a non-binding provide to purchase MultiChoice, per stories from Bloomberg and Tech Central, 4 years after it first purchased a 6.5% stake in Africa’s largest pay-TV firm.
Per Bloomberg, the provide from Canal+ is 105 Rands per share, a major markup on MultiChoice’s present share value of 79 Rands.
Canal+ elevated its deal with Africa up to now decade and has grown from simply 1 million African subscribers in 2016 to 7.6 million in 2023. In July 2019, it purchased ROK Studios, a prolific Nigerian movie manufacturing firm, from IrokoTV to extend its slate of unique content material choices.
A timeline of Vivendi’s MultiChoice stake
Shopping for MultiChoice will characterize a grand step in Vivendi’s African ambitions if it might get the deal over the road. With Vivendi’s historical past of hostile takeovers, trade watchers had predicted it will try the identical play with MultiChoice.
In October 2015, Vivendi spent €180 million to accumulate minority stakes in two publicly traded gaming firms, Gameloft (6.2%) and Ubisoft (6.6%), ultimately shopping for a ten% stake in every firm, a TechCabal report from 2020 stated.
It additionally made a hostile takeover of Gameloft by shopping for over 30% of the corporate earlier than convincing different shareholders to promote their stakes. In June 2016, Gameloft turned a Vivendi subsidiary.
Since 2020, Canal+ has elevated its stake in MultiChoice from 20.1% to round 32.6%. In 2022, Vivendi acquired $40m in dividends from Multichoice Group (up from $23.3m in 2021).
Beneath South African regulation, Canal+ should make a mandatory takeover offer when its shareholding reaches 35%. However an entire takeover of MultiChoice could also be not possible within the close to future.
Regulation pumps the brakes
By regulation, Canal+, a international firm, can’t have greater than 20% of the voting rights on the board of administrators of a South African broadcaster. MultiChoice enforces this rule by a voting rights cap.
“A full takeover of MultiChoice seems to be unlikely to us,” stated a Bloomberg intelligence analyst in February 2023.
