The maximum number of subscribers increases to 110 million, Warner Bros. box office falls

Warner Bros. Discovery reported its third-quarter 2024 earnings results on Thursday. From July 1st to September. The 30-year period ended with WBD’s HBO, Max and Discovery+ having more than 110 million subscribers worldwide, while box office revenue fell 40% compared to last summer’s blockbuster “Barbie.”

Direct-to-consumer sales rose 9% to $2.6 billion. Sales increased 8% during the quarter, ad sales increased 51%, and content decreased 11%. Warner Bros. Discovery aired the second season of “House of the Dragon,” as well as Olympic programming in international territories and Discovery’s “Shark Week” programming block.

During a call with investors later Thursday, WBD CEO David Zaslav said the company expects to “significantly exceed” its goal of $1 billion in streaming profits in 2025. JB Perrette, global streaming and gaming chief, says Max will initiate some “very soft messaging” about sharing passwords before the end of the year, which represents a “form of price increase” for WBD.

In the studio segment, WBD reported a 17% decline in revenue to $2.7 billion. TV revenue rose 30%, while video game sales fell 31% (“MultiVersus,” the “SmashBros”-style game, couldn’t live up to last year’s hit “Hogwarts Legacy”), and cinema sales fell at the top mentioned 40% with weaker performance “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and “Twisters” compared to “Barbie” from 2023.

WBD Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels said the company has taken “additional impairment charges of more than $100 million” on games due to “underperforming releases,” bringing the current total write-down on games to more than $300 million .

Warner Bros. Discovery’s network division increased revenue by 3% to $5 billion compared to the third quarter of 2023. Content revenue increased 87%, while ad sales fell 11% and distribution fell 7%.

Wall Street forecast an earnings per share (EPS) loss of 9 cents on revenue of $9.8 billion, according to analyst consensus data provided by LSEG. Warner Bros. Discovery reported diluted earnings per share of 5 cents, a profit of $135 million on revenue of $9.6 billion.

The company said it had a total of $40.7 billion in debt. Free cash flow was $632 million for the quarter.

“Warner Bros. Discovery’s third quarter results demonstrate once again that the strategy we have pursued to prepare Warner Bros. Discovery for future success is delivering important results, even as we continue to face extraordinary disruptions in our environment “Said Zaslav in a letter to shareholders. “Thanks to our rapid international expansion and continued investment in high-quality, diverse content, we saw an acceleration of momentum in our global direct-to-consumer business in the third quarter. Overall, Max recorded 7.2 million new customer additions, its strongest quarterly growth since platform launch, resulting in healthy subscriber-based revenue growth and significant progress toward our 2025 direct-to-consumer financial goals. Likewise, our recently announced strategic partnership with Charter Communications for both linear network distribution and Max bundling has not only strengthened the value of our content portfolio, but also demonstrated our willingness to work with our partners to enhance the consumer experience as it evolves to improve our industry transformation.”