Canal+ SA (LSE:CAN) shares dropped 16.8% to 246.2p on Wednesday after the French pay-television group revealed the scale of the challenge facing its newly acquired Africa-focused MultiChoice business.
For 2025, the Paris-headquartered group reported results that beat its own guidance for the core Canal+ business, with adjusted EBIT of €527 million against a target of €515 million and free cash flow of €428 million against guidance of more than €370 million.
But the MultiChoice numbers, covering only three months and eleven days following the completion of the acquisition in September, told a bleaker story, with revenues down 6% to €2.4 billion and the subscriber base shrinking from 14.9 million to 14.4 million.
For 2026, Canal+ guided for a combined group adjusted EBIT of €735 million, but MultiChoice is expected to face a €140 million headwind from subscriber base inertia and cost inflation before the benefit of accelerated synergies, which the group now expects to reach €250 million in 2026, up from €150 million flagged in January.
The new African broadcasting arm is to receive €100 million of turnaround investment and is expected to generate negative free cash flow in 2026, too.
Overall, said chief executive Maxime Saada, the group was entering 2026 "from a position of strength, clarity and confidence," pointing to new partnerships with Sky to develop English-language drama and with Google Cloud and OpenAI to deploy AI across its platforms.
Canal+ proposed a 10% increase in its dividend to 2.2 euro cents per share and said it plans to list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange later this year.