Canal+ gives its experience to PCCW for the growth of Viu

PCCW y Canal+ have formed a strategic partnership to accelerate the consolidation of It saw, a pan-regional OTT service with a presence in Asia, the Middle East and South Africa.

As part of this agreement, Canal+ becomes a minority shareholder of Viu through a staggered investment of 300 million dollars that includes an initial investment of 200 million. In this way, the French group now has a 26.1% stake in Viu with the possibility of increasing its stake up to 51% in the medium term through an “additional investment”.

PCCW expects this strategic partnership to enable further growth for Viu, leveraging the global strength and experience of Canal+ through various initiatives including the collaboration in premium productions and content creation, expanding global market reach for Viu and the continuous improvement of user experience. Likewise, Canal+ sets its sights on Asian markets as growth engines.

Maxime Send, CEO of the Canal+ Group, confirms that his investment in Viu responds to his objective of targeting the asian market as “an additional growth engine for the group.” “Viu is already a business of scale, and with its hybrid AVOD and SVOD business model and its focus on local content it has all the ingredients to deliver superior growth and continue to be a leading service in the region and beyond,” highlights Saada.

On the other hand, Susanna Hui, PCCW Group acting CEO and group CFO, believes the company is at “the right time to introduce a strategic partner into the business that would see us drive our global expansion and growth by unlocking the potential of the Viu business at scale and to create more value for our shareholders.”

This is Viu, Canal+'s bet

With more than 66 million monthly active users (MAU) and 12 million paying subscribers, Viu has consistently been ranked the first video streaming platform in terms of MAU and second in terms of subscribers and streaming minutes among global and regional players in Southeast Asia. Viu, which has established a strong dual ad-supported video-on-demand model (AVOD) and video on demand with subscription (SVOD), offers regional and local content such as series and lifestyle programs of different genres from the main content providers with linguistic localization, as well as top-quality original productions under the “Viu Original” brand.

In addition to a solid offering of Korean content, Live Originals produced in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and other Viu markets have been among the top positions in their respective markets. In 2022, Viu recorded revenue of more than 250 million dollars, which represents a year-on-year growth of 36%.