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Canal+, which has 42 million subscribers in 70 countries, began trading in Johannesburg on Wednesday – the first French company on a South African exchange
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The listing fulfills the regulatory commitment from the $3 billion acquisition of MultiChoice delisted from the JSE in December 2025.
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The real test begins now: can a €100 million turnaround plan stop Africa's biggest pay-TV operator from losing customers?
Canal+, the largest pay-TV operator in Europe and Africa, began trading on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on Wednesday under the ticker CNP. It became the first French company to be listed on the South African stock exchange – a milestone that closes the regulatory book on one of Africa's biggest media deals, and opens a difficult chapter.
The listing involves all 991,959,494 ordinary shares of Canal+ on the JSE Main Board in the Media sector, Radio and TV Broadcasters sub-sector. No new shares were sold, no new cash was raised. South African investors can now buy Canal+ stock locally, in rand, without having to travel to London. Shares on both exchanges are fully convertible – investors can move freely between Johannesburg and London.
The list was no surprise. Canal+ voluntarily proposed the JSE commitment during its MultiChoice acquisition, before competition authorities formally required it, and the South African Competition Tribunal accepted it as part of the merger approval. The company had nine months from the delisting of MultiChoice on December 10, 2025, to fulfill the pledge. It came under six.
CEO Maxime Saada calls Africa “This continent offers the strongest growth potential in our region” in the group's March earnings call – a bold claim for a business that spent most of 2025 watching customers leave the house.
The day before trading began, Canal+ was valued at £2.25 billion – ZAR 51 billion at current rates. For South African pension funds and asset managers bound by domestic investment rules, the JSE listing now gives them direct access to the extended group without sending money through London.
bleeding subscribers
What investors will really see is change. Canal+ management said in a full-year 2025 earnings call that MultiChoice is headed into a “downward cycle” from 2023 due to currency devaluation, inflation, power outages, rising content costs and the costly failure of its Showmax streaming service. By the end of 2025, MultiChoice is projected to lose 500,000 customers to 14.4 million, while revenues will fall 6% to €2.4 billion.
Canal+'s answer is a €100 million shot in the arm. The plan, scheduled to begin in 2026, aims to restart customer growth and will be partly funded by accelerating cost cuts while aiming for savings of €150 million this year. The group is also hiring 1,000 salespeople across Africa – a ground-breaking bet that the customer exodus was partly a sales execution problem, not just market saturation. On the cost side, Canal+ is closing loss-making Showmax contracts, restructuring MultiChoice operations, and rationalizing real estate across its footprint at a one-time restructuring cost of €70 million to €100 million.
The long-term mathematics is ambitious. Run-rate synergy targets will reach €250 million in adjusted EBIT and €220 million in free cash flow by 2026, climbing to above €400 million by 2030. But Canal+ still expects MultiChoice to absorb €140 million of losses in 2026, with subscriber numbers continuing to fall before the recovery plan is launched.
Africa's structural case remains intact. The Africa and Asia segment has 23 million pay-TV subscribers in more than 40 countries, delivering content in more than 50 languages via satellite, terrestrial and streaming. The group's fiber arm, GVA, runs home connectivity networks in nine African countries. With only half of households electrified and OTT penetration at just 4%, there is room for growth – but the same conditions also describe the environment that made MultiChoice's recovery so difficult in the first place.
Canal+ is also not a pure-play broadcaster. Its StudioCanal branch produces over 200 films and 80 TV series per year from 23 production companies, with a library of over 18,000 titles, including the Paddington and Bridget Jones franchises. Dailymotion, its video platform, reaches 400 million users in 191 countries. JSE investors are buying not just satellite dishes but also content machines.
For full year 2026, Canal+ guides adjusted EBIT of €735 million, operating cash flow above €500 million and free cash flow above €250 million. The question is whether Africa's figures uphold that guidance – or quietly pull it down.
Idris Linge