David Zaslav, President & CEO of Discovery Inc.
Anjali Sundaram | CNBC
Warner Bros. Discovery shares fell Wednesday after the corporate reported a decline in promoting revenue, a bigger-than-expected loss and lackluster streaming subscriber numbers.
Here’s what the corporate reported for the quarter ended Sept. 30, versus analysts’ estimates, in keeping with LSEG, formerly generally known as Refinitiv:
- Loss per share: 17 cents vs. 6 cents expected
- Revenue: $9.98 billion vs. $9.98 billion expected
Warner Bros. Discovery reported a net lack of $417 million for the third quarter, or 17 cents per share, down from the $2.31 billion loss the corporate reported within the year-ago quarter, or 95 cents per share.
The corporate’s stock slide comes after a media rally late last week driven by Roku and Paramount earnings. Rival media giant Disney is about to report earnings after the closing bell Wednesday.
The nice feelings turned out to be short-lived, nevertheless, as Warner Bros. Discovery’s results reflected dire trends within the legacy media industry.
Ad revenue in Warner Bros. Discovery’s TV networks segment fell 12% in comparison with a yr earlier, reflecting a decline in audiences for general entertainment and news programming, in addition to soft ad trends within the U.S., the corporate said.
The corporate also warned of numerous obstacles heading into 2024, including sluggish ad revenue and ongoing impacts from the actors’ strike.
“This can be a generational disruption we’re going through. Going through that with a streaming service that is losing billions of dollars, it’s really difficult to go on offense,” CEO David Zaslav said through the earnings conference call.
The third quarter marked the primary full quarter since Warner Bros. Discovery launched its flagship streaming service Max in May, which merged content from HBO Max and Discovery+.
The corporate reported 95.1 million global direct-to-consumer subscribers, a 700,000 decrease from the previous quarter, and lower than the analyst projection of 95.4 million subscribers, in keeping with StreetAccount.
The “modest sequential loss” was largely a results of an “extraordinarily light content slate,” CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said through the earnings call.
The streaming business did swing to a profit within the quarter, nevertheless.
Warner Bros. Discovery also made headway on paying off its debt load, with $2.4 billion of repayments made through the quarter, the corporate said. It still has $45.3 billion in gross debt.