Canal+Sa

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Canal Plus H126 results. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session through the phone lines and instruction will follow at that time. I would like to remind all participants that this call is being recorded. I will now hand over to the Canal Plus CEO, Maxime Saada, to open the presentation. Please go ahead. Stéphane Ménasé

Stéphane Baumier, Laetitia Ménasé, Audrey Richard

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today. I am Maxime Saada, CEO of Canal+, and I am joined today by Amandine Ferre, CFO and Chief ESG Officer.

Good morning.

We are delighted to be with you to present the Canal+, results for the first half of 2026. Let me now walk you through today's agenda. As you know, this is our first half year with MultiChoice as a part of the group. Its integration and more significantly its turnaround plan have been a key focus for the management team. So in addition to our results, we will update you on our progress at MultiChoice. We'll also cover synergies and Amandine will take you through our financial results and outlook. Let's begin with a reminder of what Canal Plus looks like today. CanalPlus is a global media and entertainment company anchored in Europe and Africa and a market leader in more than 40 countries. We serve more than 40 million subscribers and last year the combined group generated 8.7 billion euros of revenue. The other key figure here is revenue generated from subscriptions. 85% of our revenues are recurring and predictable because we have loyal subscribers. Unlike many of our competitors, Canal+, is a leader across the entire media value chain. As a producer through our in-house studio, Studio Canal, we own global IPs such as Paddington, Bridget Jones, Evil Dead, and many others. Studio Canal produces and distributes 100 films and 40 series each year, and our library of movies is the largest and most prestigious outside of the United States. Our own high-quality content is the foundation of our offer and a key driver of subscriber engagement and loyalty. And on top of that, as an aggregator, we partner with the world's biggest film studios and streamers to provide our subscribers with all the content they want to watch, in one place, on one platform. And of course, Canet Plus remains the home of sports. We are the number one broadcaster globally of the UFA Champions League, the Premier League, Formula One, and MotoGP. We also hold the rights that matter most locally, like the Premier Soccer League in South Africa. The final part of the value chain is distribution. Our app is available on every kind of device, from smart TVs to mobiles, and Canal Plus Telecom offers fibre connectivity in 15 highly populated cities across 10 countries in Africa and in France overseas. With that overview of the business in mind, let me now turn to the highlights of the first half of 2026. I am pleased to say we have published a strong set of results and we are executing our strategy as planned. Amandine Ferre will provide more details on the numbers in a moment, but in short, we are well on track to meet our full-year 2026 guidance. In the first half of 2026, revenue increased by 40% year-on-year to 4.3 billion euros, reflecting our increased scale in multi-choice. On a like-for-like basis excluding multi-choice, revenue was up 1.4%. Profitability was even more encouraging. Adjusted EBIT before exceptional items reached 433 million euros, up 68% year-on-year, and up 13% excluding multi-choice. And we converted that into very strong cash generation, with 414 million euros of free cash flow before exceptional items, 254 million euros excluding multi-choice. Second, the multi-choice turnaround plan is underway. I'll come back to this in more detail but the key point is we have identified every lever available and we are now pulling those levers across content, technology, pricing and distribution. As you know, MultiChoice has been losing subscribers. And while the base is broadly flat versus last year, it is too early to say we have achieved a turnaround. We delivered a commercially successful World Cup and we should be satisfied. But we would not have been able to deliver these results without the World Cup. Last but not least, our accelerated synergies plan is on track and we expect to hit our 250 million euro target for the year. And in fact, synergies already contributed 120 million euros to our adjusted EBIT at a half year. Overall then, a very positive six months. Now content. Today's strong results were only possible because we have consistently made the right choices on content investment, our productions, acquisitions and partnerships. Over the last six months, we have continued to make real progress. First, we reinforced our position as the home of entertainment. In sport, after extending our UFA rights in France last year, we have now secured those rights in Poland, Austria and Switzerland through to 2031. And in a significant step for the group, we acquired exclusive rights to all UFA club competitions in Belgium from 2027. We will launch in Belgium next year. We also secured the rights to the Americas Cup across Europe and Africa, and key local rights, which I will cover in a moment. In cinema, yesterday, we announced the extension of our agreement with French cinema organizations. This agreement, which we extended until 2032, ensures that only Canal Plus can broadcast movies as soon as six months after their theatrical release. Second, we keep building our franchise factory and our slate. Paddington remains a powerful global franchise for us. The fourth film will be written by the co-writers of Zip and The Thick of It, and following the huge success of the musical in London, we are taking Paddington to Broadway. We're also bringing back another iconic title with a remake of Escape from New York by Zack Snyder in the pipeline. Escape from New York is in our library of movies, obviously. Third, you will have seen we announced a joint venture with Hachette Livre to support our focus on turning best-selling books into premium screen content, combining Hachette's wealth of IP with Studio Canal's production capabilities. Hachette is the third largest book publishing company in the world. This year's Cannes offered proof of how popular book adaptations can be. Our upcoming adaptation of Matt Haig's The Midnight Library was the most wanted film at the festival and landed the biggest film deal across all studios. We also have other adaptations in the works, including The Divorce, the new novel by number one New York Times bestselling author Freda McFadden, writer of The Housemaid, a film we distributed in Australia with great success. Having covered the headline results and our content momentum, I would now like to go deeper into the multi-choice turnaround. This is one of the most important stories of the half, so let me show you the concrete actions we have taken on the ground across content, pricing, distribution, and subscriber acquisition. First, as we said at Folio, and is always the case at Canal+, we focus on content. The difference now is that we do so from a position of greater scale and strength. In the first half, we secured a series of major sports rights that will ensure the super sport lineup continues to be as compelling as ever. We locked in the Premier Soccer League for the long term in South Africa. It is the most watched local competition in the region. On top of that, we secured the Men's and Women's Rugby World Cups in 27 and 29, as well as the Vodacom United Rugby Championship. and we are ramping up movie and series production in Africa, investing in distinctively African stories, such as our first major South African film production, The Road Home, and a screen adaptation of the best-selling book Americana. Personally, I'm looking forward to the heist of Benin. I will not spoil the plot, but you can think of it as Ocean's Eleven with an African twist. This is just the beginning. Together, this combination of world-class sport and premium local content will ensure our offering stands out. Of course, building the best content offer is just part of it. We then need to showcase that content to attract customers and create engagement. This is one thing we really know how to do at Canal+. For the World Cup, we maximized our campaign platform. Sleep can wait. TV ads, social media, we made sure we reach our target audience everywhere we had World Cup rights. Working with Idris Elba certainly helped. We took a similar approach with the launch of Novelas+. Different target audience, same principle. Put the full weight of our marketing machine behind the best new content. I will come to the impact of this in a moment. So we have the content and a marketing machine that promotes it. Next, we assess everything that will discourage potential customers from signing up. Reducing these barriers through entry is another important component of our acquisition engine. This work is just starting. Thanks to our new scale, we can reach broader agreements with suppliers and we negotiate from a position of greater strength. And when we make savings, we can transfer part of those savings to our customers. In Kenya, for example, the price new customers pay for equipment has been reduced by 22% in the last three months. The next key component in that engine is our sales network. The more points of sales we have, the more subscriber acquisition opportunities we create. In our strategic update in March, we highlighted the need to develop our distribution network to shift the focus of our business much towards sales. Since that update, we have broadened our market coverage and accessibility by more than 15% across multi-choice markets. Focusing on Uganda, for example, we have increased the size of our point of sale network by 17% since March. As with all parts of our turnaround plan, this is just the beginning of what we will do. All of those initiatives, improving and promoting our content offer, reducing entry costs and expanding our distribution networks, are reigniting our commercial engine. And we already have proof of the impact this can have. In multi-choice countries, we delivered a 40% increase in new subscribers compared to H1-25. And in South Africa, in June, we recorded the highest level of new subscriber uptake in a decade. This is a great example of what we can deliver when we put the right content in front of consumers with the right commercial process and the right price. Of course, the World Cup is a significant one-off event and we will need to work hard to retain as many of our new subscribers as we can. But we know how to do that. That covers our results headlines and early progress on the multi-choice turnaround. I will now turn to synergies. I am pleased to say we are well on track to achieve a 2026 cost synergies target. This chart shows group adjusted EBIT cost synergies measured against our 2025 cost baseline and before implementation costs. As you can see, halfway through the year, we are halfway there. So far, the entire 120 million euro P&L impact has been realized at MultiChoice, but other business units will be impacted in H2. A number of key initiatives are already implemented and delivering. We have discontinued the Showmax streaming service. We have optimized and renegotiated our content costs. We have carried out the voluntary 7th plan and multi-choice. And we have renegotiated hardware prices benefiting, as I mentioned before, from the group's new combined scale. Beyond these initiatives, several more are ongoing. We are optimizing our broadcasting infrastructure, renegotiating contracts with our technology and other service providers, and restructuring IRDETO, Multi-Choices Technology and Cyber Security subsidiary. Taken together, these actions give us good visibility and confidence. We will deliver the €250 million full-year cost synergies target and keep us on track for our 2030 target. With the turnaround in the synergies plan now covered, I will hand over to Amandine Ferre, who will take you through our first half financial results.

Thank you, Maxime. To properly assess our first-half performance, there are two important points to keep in mind. First, these figures are the results of structural initiatives we have implemented to improve our business. As Maxime explained, the cost synergies resulting from the acquisition of multi-choice are gaining traction. We also continue to work not only on the cost-efficiency measures we launch, especially in Europe, but also on multiple initiatives to improve cash conversion. Second, it's fair to say we have also benefit in H1 from tailwinds that will not replicate in H2. The FIFA World Cup, for instance, had a strong impact on our subscriber base in Africa and will, of course, not be there at the end of the year. Similarly, we were helped by positive seasonality on cost, especially on content, and favorable phasing of payments. Finally, our boost plan on the multi-choice perimeter has just only started. We've still limited costs so far, but we are yet to see the fully-fledged impact on the P&L over time. Moving now on H1 figures, starting with our subscriber base. As we say at Full Year, our base peaked at over 42 million end of 2025 as a result of the usual end of year festive season and the positive impact of the AFCON tournament. At Half Year, we are above 41 million, an increase of plus 8% versus Half Year 25. Within what we have seen as a strong growth in high-value retail sales, especially in Africa and in France, to which I will come back in a few moments. We saw very strong growth in French-speaking Africa, thanks to our compelling content lineup, where unscripted and local series have been very popular. Finally, as Maxime outlined, our successful execution of the World Cup had a very positive impact in Africa and helped to keep the multi-choice base broadly stable. Our focus is now on retaining as many of our subscribers as possible, but similar to AFCON, our subscriber base will have temporarily peaked during the World Cup. Now on revenues. This is where you can really see the impact of the multi-choice acquisition on our scale, as our reported revenue is up by 40% versus last year. On a like-for-like basis, if we compare restated combined revenue, we are up 1.4%, with the increase of Canal Plus historical perimeter compensating for the decrease in multi-choice revenue. The scope effect here refers mainly to the acquisition of Lucky Red, the Italian producer and distributor we acquired earlier this year. Before going into each segment individually, let me break down the variation of our adjusted EBIT before exceptional item between H125 and H126. Restricted from Vietnam and excluding multi-choice, the group adjusted EBIT was €257 million in June 2025. When we include the contribution of multi-choice restituted from showmax losses, we reach €363 million for H1-25. The showmax losses have been stopped as a result of the discontinuation and this was a key achievement in H1. Moving to the performance of 26, I am pleased to announce that almost all of our segments, including multi-choice, have seen an increase in profitability. This very solid performance across the group led to an overall increase of adjusted debits of 68%, enabling us to reach €433 million in the first six months of 2026. I will now focus on each of our three segments, Europe, Africa and Asia, and content production distribution and other. Starting with Europe, as I said, we have seen a significant increase in subscribers in Europe, driven by the strong performance in France across both retail and wholesale. That was partially offset by the divestment of a satellite subscriber base in Hungary in 2025, as mentioned at Q1. On a like-for-like basis, revenue is down 1.5%, driven by the closure of the C8 channel in France. C8 closed on the 1st of March last year, with C8 contributing to two months in H125. Our divestment in Hungary also had a negative impact on revenues, but both C8 and the D2H base in Hungary had positive impact on margin. On profitability, we had an excellent six months, with our margin rate standing at 6% at Alfiore, compared to 4.9% last year. This increase proves the effectiveness of our cost-efficiency initiatives, although some have a positive seasonality effect, especially on content cost, and that will partially reverse on H2. It's also worth noting that in H2 we will start to invest in our business in Central Europe to implement the strategy we presented at the full year announcement and especially in Belgium to ensure a successful start of our activity there. We expect the margin rate at the segment at the end of the year to land close to last year. Moving now to Africa and Asia, where the positive impact of the World Cup is most notable, as a key driver of the 7% increase in our subscriber base compared to H1-25. While revenue in this segment is broadly flat, our adjusted EBIT has increased by 21% compared to H1-25, driven by the strong performance of the Cannabis perimeter and the implementation of the cost synergies at MultiChoice. I will now unpack the dynamic of the two perimeters separately. Staying at the African-Asian segment but excluding multi-choice, so the Canal Plus historical perimeter in Africa and Asia. Our subscriber base increased by 17%, up to 9.4 million. This increase, driven by our compelling content line-up and the continuous improvement of our commercial and distribution model, led to an increase in like-for-like revenues of 12%. We have also seen double-digit revenue growth at Canal+, Telecom Africa, as a result of its strong commercial performance. Profitability of the segment, including multi-choice, has also improved, with adjusted EBIT up 9%, driven by the strong growth of our pay TV and fibre operation, and with a major rate stable at a very high level, as you can see. Now, focusing on multi-choice. As a reminder, the benefit of cost synergies is one of the two primary reasons we acquire multi-choice, the other one being to capture the African growth opportunity. And as you can see, we are already seeing the positive impact of the synergies, with the €120 million saving driving the increase in the multi-choice adjusted EBIT. The Showmax closure will present €52 million, with the remaining €70 million generated by the other initiatives Maxime already mentioned, including saving on content cost and tech renegotiation, and the first impact of the voluntary severance plan. Including the impact of the top-line decrease and the cost inflation, totalling around minus 35 million euros, we get to 143 million euros adjusted EBIT at the end of June 26. Staying with Multi-Choice, here you can see the significant positive impact of our content line-up together with the initiatives we have been implementing as part of the boost plan. This has enabled us to maintain a broadly flat subscriber base compared to H125. This is an early sign of improvement as the year before the subscriber base has declined by 10% between H124 and H125. Like it did with AFCON, our subscriber base will have peaked during the World Cup. It's important to note that the main effects of our growth initiatives are expected to continue to ramp up in H226 and through H27 and H28. Therefore, revenues still declined 3.4% on a like-for-like basis, mainly driven by the reduced equivalent revenues. Subscriber revenues only declined by close to 1%, demonstrating signs that the situation is stabilizing. As I have just explained, adjusted EBIT increased by 34%, mainly as a result of cost synergies. Finally, let's look at the content production distribution on our segment, where revenue increased by 10%. Studio Canal had a strong six months relatively, with local breakout hits including Gourou, The Housemaid, Extra Wurst and Woolworker 2. This positive momentum continued in both series production and catalogue, reinforced by the acquisition of Lucky Red, we announced earlier this year. As to daily motion, it continues to deliver dynamic growth with its expansion of its commercial reach. The slight decline in profitability year on year is due to front-end loaded costs and we expect the margin to improve in H2. Now, turning to our P&L. After removing the discontinued Showmax and Vietnam operations, earnings from the combined group improved significantly. And there are a few points to draw your attention to. The multi-choice restructuring costs were offset by a number of positive one-offs, including the multi-choice PPA and the Dailymotion-Google litigation settlement for 29 million euros. Cost of financing has been reduced by refinancing multi-choice debt and the acquisition debt on more favourable terms. We had a minus 87 million euros non-cash impact due to unfavourable exchange rate gains and losses. and we had a higher tax charge compared to H125 due to our increased profit before tax. Our effective tax rate stand at 43% on Canal Plus historical perimeter, down from 38% last year and 76% for multi-choice. We'll continue to focus on improving that. Looking now at our CFFO before exceptional items. Thanks to our ongoing cash optimization initiatives and our favorable fending of payment, especially on MultiChoice, we have generated 559 million euros of CFFO and a 129% cash conversion rate. Of this 559 million euros, the historical perimeter of Canal+, contributes to 334 million, while MultiChoice delivers 225 million euros. Thanks to that high level of CFFO, our free cash flow before exceptional items reached 414 million euros. To go into the detail, we benefit from a positive one-off of €25 million in cash tax as a result of the change in multi-choice financial year and from the improved condition of our refinancing as I already mentioned. We also paid €336 million in exceptional items, including a €275 million payment linked to the settlement of the French VAT litigation. It will be complete by a final €89 million payment that we will make in H2. Despite this exceptional item, free cash flow in H1 was still positive and totalled €79 million. Now to update you on our debt position. Our leverage ratio decreased from 1.96, excluding the VAT and TST settlement effect at the end of December 25, to 1.83 at June 26. The main building blocks of this variation were of course the free cash flow we generated, but also the outflow related to M&A with the acquisition of Lucky Raid I already mentioned, and the discontinued operation. Let me conclude with our financial structure. As you can see on this slide, we have continued to successfully diversify our source of funding, which is a key strength of our financial profile. In May, we complete and succeed our second bond insurance. Like the first one, it was a 700 million transaction and it was largely oversubscribed. This new six-year bond further strengthened our debt profile, extending our average debaturity to 4.4 years. Combined with the 1.7 billion of available liquidity, it provides us with both significant financial flexibility and strong visibility for the years ahead. With that, I will hand back to Maxime.

Thank you, Amandine. Before we take questions, I will take you through our outlook. In summary, we have delivered a strong first half with results to match, and so we remain well on track to meet our guidance for the full year. As a reminder, we expect revenue to remain flat and adjusted EBIT to increase by 5% year-on-year to €735 million, with CFFO of over €600 million and over €250 million in free cash flow. Beyond 26 over the medium term, we expect to see moderate growth on the top line, over €850 million of adjusted EBIT, over €800 million of CFFO, and over €500 million of free cash flow. And as I said earlier, This will be the bare minimum as we are aiming to do more and our medium-term outlook is not our endpoint. It is the starting point for our next phase of growth. Thank you. Now we will take your questions.

Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you are dialed in into the call and would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. We will pause for a moment to assemble the queue. We will take our first question from Adrian de Saint-Hilaire with BOFA. Adrian, please go ahead.

Yep, thank you very much for the presentation, please. First, perhaps Maxime and Amandine, you can talk about the retention trends of the newly acquired multi-choice customers that you've observed in July and what you expect in August and September. Secondly, I know in your bridge you talk about a 35 million impact of growth, investments, cost escalators, etc. More specifically, can you elaborate on how much boost investments were made in the first half and how much you expect into the second half? And then lastly, more so for Amandine, Are there any cash exceptionals that we should be aware of for 27? Of course, 26 has a lot of things like restructuring and the VAT payments, but anything we should be aware of for 27. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Adrien, for your question. Retention trends on MCG subs. Too early to tell on the World Cup. On the previous months, we have seen no change, no negative change. So retention, our assessment, early assessment of the multi-choice situation is really that retention is actually pretty good. and that the main issue we needed to address was to increase significantly growth ads. So we've been focusing on sales and as you've noticed it has had an impact although we're cautious because of course there was this false positive of the World Cup which certainly helps but we know that there are other measures that really had a positive impact. But it's too early to say how many subs following the World Cup will stay on. We're good at that, but we know, of course, some of them would eventually leave. On the negative 35 million impact and on the cash question, Amandine.

Yes, so we've been launching a boost plan and actually we started that in H1, middle H1, so we only had a small part of the cost in H1 and the bulk of it will be on H2. I'm sure you remember the figures that we provide on the full year, it was minus 100 on the boost plan, so only a small part of it was taken on the H1 and the bulk of it will be on H2. It's a bit similar for the inflation cost. It was also minus 100 million for the full year. We had a small proportion of increase during the first half, and the majority of it will be on the second one. Adding all the impact that we explained at the full year, we had minus 40 million on the impact of the top line decrease, minus 100 on the inflation, and minus 100 on the boost, so a total of 2.40. So we only had part of this 2.40 as it's only a minus 35 as of today. So we intend to have larger cost base for the second half of the year. And regarding the impact of the boost plan, 90% of it is variable cost and so if we manage to have the full impact of the boost plan, we will have a positive impact on the subscriber base trends. And regarding your second question on the exceptional cash for 27, the majority of the exceptional costs that we will have in 26 will be the restructuring cost of MultiChoice and IRDETO. We launched the VSTO operation in the last quarter of... We had provision on that, but the cash impact should be on the second half of 2026. We will also have in 2026 the remaining 89 million euros on the VAT litigation. For 2027, we might have some impact on the restructuring of multi-choice, but it will be much lower compared to what we will have in 2026. Fantastic, thank you.

Our next question comes from Jerome Bowden with AutoBHF. Jerome, please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. I hope you hear me well. First question on France. So you give some numbers on profitability for France in 2025. Could you give us some indication for H1? Does the trend still improve in H1 versus 2025? That's my first question. My second question is just to follow up on Adrienne's question on the boost plan. So you said that the number of point of sales is increasing by 15% in H1 and that the commercial initiative should accelerate in H2. So I'm just trying to reconciliate that, the two statements. Do you expect an acceleration in terms of growth of the number of point of sales in H2? And also, could you be a bit more specific on what does that mean in practice and perhaps give us an example of the type of new distributor that you are adding? And second question, on the boost plan, should we expect some new initiatives next year? And lastly, to finish, still on multi-choice, on FX, so the trends are now positive. Could you remind us your edging policy and what should be the theoretical translation in terms of revenues and EBIT for the rest of the year? Thank you very much.

Amandine, on profitability in France.

Yes, so we do not provide the detail on profitability in France for domestic oil results. What I can say is that yes, we improve the profitability of France compared to H1-25. We took many measures actually and you know that improving the profitability of Europe was one of our main strategic axes for this year. We stopped DTT in France, we stopped CA, we did a lay-off plan in France and so we had a positive impact in 26 compared to what we had in 25. So we improved the profitability, yes.

On the boost plan, it will accelerate because it takes time to... hire the people that do the door-to-door, for example. It takes time to rebuild the network. So you ask an example. Some of them are very established retail points that have stopped selling multi-choice because the volumes were not there. and it wasn't worth it really when you don't have any volume since most of it is based on commissions for the retail stores to carry multi-choice so we're really going to establish stores but sometimes it's really very local and mom-and-pop independent stores and establishing them as a multi-choice retail store so it's really retail physical, on-the-ground stuff. Because, of course, you need to be able to take advantage of promotions and so on and really be where people are. So in very dense areas. There will be some new initiatives. It's early to speak, but of course we're looking at the commercial offers. We're looking at branding. We're looking at content and a number of additional initiatives there. So yes, there's a full plan that we don't necessarily want to communicate right now but that will continue through the second half of 26 and a lot of the 27 as well. On FX?

On FX, we had zero impact on revenues on H1 but it had two different sequences actually. We had a negative impact in Q1 across Africa and we had a positive impact in Q2 and this was driven by the multi-choice countries. Regarding our ageing policy, there are two different types of ageing. Regarding the translational risk, so converting the financial statement from local currency to euro, we do not age because it would be too expensive. We had many discussions with the banks and it was, especially with ZAR, the South African currency, it was not making any financial sense. Regarding transactional risk, so the revenue and cost in different currencies, what we do is that we try to do our best to match currencies between cost and revenues. So we try to negotiate payment terms with the right owners on local currencies as much as possible. It's not always possible or easy, but this is really something that we are pushing in our renegotiations. And when it's not possible, we do use financial derivatives to edge the risk. So quite classic. Jérôme, answer your question.

And our next question comes from Christophe Treblanc with Bernstein. Christophe, please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. So I have two questions. The first one is on The middle term, I think, Maxime, you said the medium-term objective was only the beginning before the next phase. We know that the multi-choice peak subscriber was slightly above 17 million. Do you think it's realistic to come back to that level within three to five years? I'm not asking for any given year, but stepping back, is that something which you believe is doable? And the second question is on M7. You had mentioned the need to reinvest in M7 and I think you invested in content. Within the contribution of Europe, Amandine was mentioning France, but is it fair to assume that M7 was still declining or are we going to reach bottom in 26 and are we still positive on that part of the footprint? Thank you.

Short answer to your first question is yes. It is reasonable to say that in a three to five year span, we'll go back to that number. Of course, as you know, the multi-choice acquisition was really driven by two objectives. One was to reach a scale that enables us to deliver cost synergies, which I think we're showing was warranted. And the second is about taking advantage of the incredible potential of the African continent. And I think we're just at the beginning of that. So, of course, I imagine that we'll be able to get back and above the number you mentioned in a three to five year span. On the second one, I will let Amandine give more details, but your assumption is correct. It is safe to assume that there is a decline in VC numbers and it will not bottom out this year. It will continue next year because this is an investment. This is not a decline. This is a company that we need to change because it was really DTH. We are now in an investment mode and so it's going to take its toll on profitability for a few years. But of course, we will know how to cover for that with the rest of our activities.

But just on your question, we are still positive on this. Declining but still positive.

Okay. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Conor O'Shea with Kepler Chevreux. Conor, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. Three questions also from my side. Firstly, can you give us an idea what the boost in June at the end of the quarter was from sign-ups around the FIFA World Cup in the African business? My understanding was that you didn't have the rights in the French-speaking territories, but if you just confirm that. And then related to that question, Given the numbers that you gave Amandine relating to MCG with I think 100,000 Extra subscribers in the first half. I think that implies, if I'm correct, that the rest of the business in that unit, which grew at 7% overall, but the rest of the business grew about 20%. So can you just confirm that and maybe also remind us of where that's coming from, that direct-to-consumer, that wholesale, and just maybe to remind us of the economics of the wholesale, Subscribers, particularly outside the European business, if that's a factor, versus direct-to-consumer. And then last question, just in terms of studio canal, I think you mentioned some phasing on costs, which was unfavourable in the first half, would be more even in the second half, but just on a revenue side, if you could just give us some highlights of what's in the pipeline for the rest of the year and how that might drive revenue growth.

Thank you. On the first one, the World Cup definitely helped, as we said, on the multi-choice territories, but not only, lowering the cost of access, increasing the point of sales, hiring sales force. And aside from the World Cup, there was a very strong set of content propositions on the multi-choice side. That helped. And on the French-speaking Africa countries, you are right. We did not have the right to pay TV workup rights. We have been very transparent on the fact that we assess every right with a very specific analytical approach. And if we believe the rights are not on par with the value we can extract, We don't buy those rights. This is what happened on the French-speaking African territories. All of the free-to-air channels were carried by Canal+. And the free-to-air channels carried approximately half of the game. So we had exactly 44 games that were available on our platform. and we managed to make the World Cup an event with these 44 games. And this is the strength of the Canal Plus model where we aggregate free-to-air pay TV platforms and we're able to play on this aggregation to make sure that whatever the event is, whatever the broadcaster is will have access to those rights. So in that case, it proved a very successful bet because without buying the rights to the World Cup, we had a very, very successful semester in French-speaking Africa in terms of acquisitions.

In addition to the local free-to-air channel, we also had a specific counter-programming with a lot of TV unscripted content, etc. Like Les Nounous, for instance, which is very famous in French-speaking Africa, and it was very successful also. It helped a lot. And regarding your other question on the growth of Africa. So just to be clear, in Africa, it's almost only retail subs. We do not have wholesale subs. So it's really retail. You have the detail of the growth of page 28 on the historical perimeter of Canal+. We are at 17% growth and the 1% of multi-choice. So Black Dead, we are at plus 7%. And your last question was on the Studio Canal pipeline for the second half of the year.

We have big movies coming, but we don't necessarily know How it's going to affect your revenues. If everything goes well, then it will impact positively. We have big French movies. We have big international movies. We have Pressure that has done very well in the US and will be released in the rest of the world starting in September. We have Les Misérables, a French adaptation, very ambitious French movie. We have Violette from the director of Amelie, which is a very famous director. Big French movie adapted from a very strong bestseller across Europe. But I think it's too early to say.

Just to clarify and confirm, Amandine, you said that the margins in Europe for the business overall would be flat for the full year, More unfavorable phasing in second half. Did you say that for the full year?

Only for the second half. On content production, we expect... Only content production.

Only content production. Okay. Okay, great. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Eric Ravary with CIC CIB. Eric, please go ahead.

Yes, good morning, Maxime and Amandine. Three questions from my side. First one on MCG. Could we have some indications about the ARPU trend in H1 on a year-on-year basis? And more generally, should we expect the ARPU as part of the plan to regain subscribers at MCG territories? Second question is on the restructuring in France with several plans with concerning 250 people in France. Could we have a indication of the phasing between H1 and H2 for the savings? And last question is on the impact of the plan to reinvest in 26-27. I think you mentioned that it is way on the European margin this year. Do you expect still a significant negative impact in 2027 for European profitability from this plan to invest in M7? Thank you.

Okay, so maybe on the first question on ARPU and MCG, no major difference in H126 compared to what was in H25. We might have change in the future because we will probably have evolution on the offer and depending on that it might change a bit but nothing significant yet. Second question on the restructuring in France. The restructuring was done in 2025 and it's over in terms of EBITDA. We still have minor cash flows because you know how it is in France, it takes a lot of time to finish the plan de départ. But the impact on EBITDA is already loaded for 2026. And last question on BC, so the new name of M7. So we will need to reinvest, so we expect to have a lower contribution of BC in 27 compared to 26. And we will also launch our activity in Belgium in 27. You might have seen that we bought the rights of the championship in Belgium, and so we will along with New Country in 27. So we will have investing, of course, to be done to make sure that this is a success.

Okay, thank you. We love Belgium. We love this market. Close to 5 million households, people who love television, they love it so much they're paying for free to air. So we expect a lot from this, and this is why we took advantage of the Champions League tender to buy all competitions, all three. And we bought both pay TV and free-to-air rides. So there will probably be some licensing, but this is now to our option. And we'll discuss with local partners to see how it goes. But it's a very similar setup to the one we have in France, which, of course, produced very positive results.

And besides Belgium, are you planning the launch of the Canal Plus brand in other XM7 territories?

We already did in Czech Republic and Slovakia. We took advantage of similar processes with the Premier League and WTA, which we bought in these markets. And WTA, as you know, is women's tennis. And those two countries, they have very strong female tennis players. This is the reason we bought WTA. It's an important right over there. Thank you Maxime.

Our next question comes from Julien Roche with Barclays. Julien, please go ahead.

Yes, good morning, Maxime. Good morning, Amandine. First question is, in France, you said that the high-value direct-to-consumer subscriber grades continue to grow. So can we have some idea of how much grows versus the end of 25 in either percentage or thousands? Then on MultiChoice, your plan is for 240 million of spend this year and you've only done 45 in the first half. Now you're telling us you will spend the other 195 in the second half. But as MultiChoice has probably grown top line better than expected with only 45 million, do you really intend to spend the whole 240? And if you do, then should we have maybe better revenues than the guidance? That's my second question. And then on Europe, you restructure France. It's coming with a higher margin, but then you're premiumizing M7, which comes with initially lower margins. So when you take those two things into account, if we take a medium term view, three to five years, what kind of margin can you get to in Europe? Thank you.

Trying to see which of the questions. It's very tough for us not to answer any of your questions, Julien. On the last one, just to say that we won't give a number on the margin target. What we can say is that the whole purpose of investing in Central Europe and Benelux is to bring back to help contribute to our key objective, which is to improve the margin of our business, pay TV business in Europe. So we are completely focused on that. And we think that these investments in Central Europe will help us, eventually help us in doing that in the span you mentioned, the three to five year. Except if Amandine feels very generous today, I don't think we're going to give you a number. Then Amandine will complete. On the MCG spend, as Amandine said, since 90% of it is variable, The more we spend, the better result it produces. But of course, we have to see the sales come. And we're not absolutely certain that these sales will come. So it's very difficult to assess how much we will spend. But if we spend the number you say, which is our intention, then it It will have a positive impact on top line. We don't think it's going to have a positive impact as soon as this year. That's the question.

And your last question to us regarding the growth in retail in France. So we are really helped by the PSG finals during the last month. So we really peaked in May and June. We are having growth. The growth is pretty similar in H1 25 compared to what we have in 26. So we have a kind of a steady growth. And I would say it's a few percent. But it's positive.

Merci.

There are no further questions. That concludes today's call. Have a nice day.

Thank you very much. Thank you all.