HiTV failed. TStv is struggling. DStv is winning territories. If you look at these companies, you will notice a clear catalytic difference: funding mechanisms. DStv was built by the largest purse in Africa, the unlimited Naspers of South Africa, which has so much money that it could buy all the publicly traded stocks in Nigeria with just 30% of the Group’s market cap. This is a company that battles Facebook and comes out as a winner. MultiChoice, though separated and traded differently now, connects to that heritage of wealth. At any point, Naspers has more cash on its balance sheet than …. (let me not make people feel bad).
This is my point: MultiChoice was not built with debt. But HiTv and TStv went through life via debts. In the media business, in Nigeria, that is very risky. It is nearly impossible to grow faster than your bank interest rate. Yes, if the interest is 25%, it technically means that to have the capacity to pay that loan, you need to be hitting excess of 40%, on value creation. That is nearly impossible in a media business where leverageables are linear, not exponential.
Read this piece by Toyin Subair, the former CEO of bankrupt HiTv. He summarized the HiTv paralysis elegantly: “As I said earlier, we were impeded from doing this at the right time. At 25-27% interest on debt, most businesses cannot survive and you will be a slave to the banks for life. That is why they take collateral from you. They lend against your collateral not your business case.” Then, he dropped more lines on why HiTv failed.
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We paid 40 million dollars for the first year of the second term of the EPL from mostly equity. But still had to come up with a guarantee of about 70 million dollars for the latter 2 years and in Nigeria, guarantee requires cash in bank. The alternative bank we were forced to use despite all their assurances and being offered half of the amount by another Bank failed to issue same on that fateful Tuesday and only offered it to us on Thursday. Meanwhile the EPL sold it to our competition on Wednesday morning.
[…]
What laws do you need, or what interpretations of the laws do you require, go and get it passed or adjudicated. Don’t assume its there and don’t be afraid of offending anyone. A few weeks before we lost the EPL rights we were approached by the competition to share it with them, in writing. We agreed and were completing the approvals on both sides when we lost the rights. Since they bought it, we asked them for it on the same terms as we had agreed to give it to them just 2 weeks prior, they refused. We ran to government to enforce the fairness clauses of the NBC Act but it fell on deaf ears.
There is one conclusion here: if you take debts, running at 25% per year in a total addressable market of about 30 million people, with only possibly 20% interested (i.e. 6 million customers), you need to do magic to survive your 5th birthday on this business. (MultiChoice has about 5.2 million customers). Largely, the size of the effective market is too small to fund that level of debt in Nigeria. Based on that, there is no way anyone can build DStv challenger on debt. The best path remains equity where the cost of capital is not high, directly at most, on the business balance sheet.
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One can build on debts on some sectors. So, it is not a blanket statement. The point is that the business most grow faster than the rate of debt-growth for that debt to be leverageable. But you cannot be growing 10% when you debt is at 27%! I have a small equation for the inflection point – when to go debt or equity across sectors. But note that dollar denominated debts when you are collecting revenue in Nigerian naira will largely fail.
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I find Toyin’s lamentations here weak and ridiculous, not on the cost of capital, but on HiTv’s business model. I mean, was HiTv built to be sustained by merely buying European sports rights and retailing same in Nigeria? Who ran the numbers and signed off that this was not crazy, bearing in mind that sports rights could double or triple between one bidding round and another? There are too many issues with HiTv, it’s obvious it was built to fail. The cost of capital was a secondary matter, it would have failed nonetheless.
On another note, there are different types of illiteracy in Nigeria, and until we make substantial progress in curing them, many things will remain complicated. One of them is financial illiteracy, it’s always laid bare when international transactions are involved. Nigeria is disproportionately an informal economy, so lots of people here have no clue on what it costs to run a formal business. People think the same way you set up shop on the street, and with few millions, you see yourself growing. You don’t really hire professionals that command good salaries, or consultants that could bill what is more your operating capital.
When you carry this mentality into a formal economy, then the hallucinations begin.
I agree with you totally
I agree with you, but my own view is dat mulitchoice can do better if increase in price of viewing then multi choice should change all the old 1970 film and repeating same films for viewers in this day and age.
Nevertheless Netflix will take over.
A made-simple explanation of an ill-fated banking system in Nigeria.
Nevertheless,regulatory agencies have
responsibility for putting in place policies that
discourage monopoly and foster competition
I agree with you ?
In Nigeria no one want public funding (IPO)
All they want is my is to go bank mortgages their lives, they don’t want share profits that’s the problem we have in Nigeria.
I struggle to understand how and why African leaders and economies missed the memo on industrial and technological development. It’s a tragedy really. I read with amusement the comments here and it’s clear we still don’t get it.
International or multinational corporate organisations dominate Nigeria’s industrial landscape and access ridiculous amounts of capital locally due to their parent company’s massive cash reserves, which are offshore. They bring in very little real capital, import their nationals to live like kings, cultivate colonised HR minds who treat local employees like dirt and then declare massive profits every year which are secreted offshore via creative inter-company billing.
Add to that a prehistoric banking sector that has close to zero understanding of SME empowerment and which presents interest rates and loan recovery terms that initially exclude over 95% of SME applicants and eventuallybdefeat more than half of the tiny group who barely made it through. They too declare massive profits annually, even after losing billions of naira annually to some of their massive borrowers who employ less than 10% of Nigeria’s labour force.
Add successive governments that have failed to make doing business easy for SMEs. Never mind that SMEs when empowered mop up more than 60%;of Nigeria’s unemployed youth. Power supply is a mess, crippling small businesses and the scanty support structures for SMEs have enough red tape to run anyone out of their minds.
Just when, against all odds, that lone SME survives, another monopolistic and predatory international mercenary company is registered and given free reign to destroy all other players in its sector.
Mention 10 Nigerian companies that have succeeded enough locally to establish a truly African or multi-continental presence. Count how many of the locally successful predators that are run by Nigerians and how quickly they drop everything and get out if town during the country’s crisis moments. Then check how many intelligent Nigerians leave these shores annually to shine like stars, running massive enterprise, and even government, in some of the world’s most advanced economies.
You still don’t get it? It’s a pity really.
The laws regulating cable TV must support and compel pay per view billing with customer friendly validity period of 45days-60days usage on subscription.
It is ridiculous trying to use fiat to compel pricing of a private company. That is not healthy for investment coupled with the huge cost of operation in Nigeria.
Lastly the laws must discourage monopoly at all cost. That is the only way to drag pricing down.
Fair and balanced. Like MTN never per second billing until Glo came, someone needs to come for Multichoice to change.
Competition is key to all suggestions…if only the government would create enabling environment for such businesses to thrive then there would competition to compel downward billing
Why u increase ur sop