Warner Bros. Discovery added 1.8 million subscribers and narrowed its streaming loss by 75% year over year to $55 million during the fourth quarter of 2023 as lower content spend and cost-cutting helped offset a 12% decline in advertising revenue in its networks segment.
Here are the top-line results:
Net loss: $400 million
Earnings Per Share: Loss of 16 cents per share, compared to a loss of 11 cents per share expected by analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research
Revenue: $10.28 billion in revenue, compared to 10.23 billion expected by analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research
Subscribers: 97.7 million
Shares of WBD fell 0.1% in pre-market trading following the earnings announcement.
The direct-to-consumer division, which includes traditional HBO cable subscriptions and the Max and Discovery+ streaming services, added 1.8 million subscribers during the quarter for a total of 97.7 million globally, including 54.6 million domestic subscribers and 42.3 million international subscribers. The total included 1.3 million subscribers from the company’s acquisition of BluTV.
Revenue for the DTC segment grew 3% year over year to $2.53 billion. Advertising revenue jumped 51% to $186 million, driven by higher U.S. Max engagement and ad-lite subscriber growth, while content revenue fell 30% to $171 million, driven by the timing of third-party licensing.
Distribution revenue in the segment climbed 4% to 2.16 billion, primarily attributable to “new partnership launches, price increases price increases in the U.S. and certain international markets, favorable mix shifts from wholesale to retail, and the transfer of TNT Sports Chile to DTC from Networks.”
The segment posted an adjusted EBITDA loss of $55 million for the quarter, compared to a year-ago loss of $217 million. But for full year 2023, it posted a profit of $103 million, compared to a loss of nearly $1.2 billion.
More to come…
