WBD Sees Impressive DTC Profit in 2024
We now have another
streamer officially in the black for an entire year— and surprisingly, it’s
Warner Bros. Discovery, which likely wasn’t on many people’s bingo cards. We
have Brandon Blake, entertainment
lawyer Los Angeles at Blake & Wang
P.A., to share the happy news.
A Strong Year End
Warner Bros Discovery
onboarded enough new streamers last year to grow their overall subscriptions to
116.9M, with an ambitious target of 150M by the end of 2026. This is on top of
an announced $677M in DTC profit for the whole year. In 2023, that was just
$103M, with a $55M loss in the Q4 period of that year.
This streaming subscriber
growth was seen over both global and domestic markets for the final quarter of
the year. Notably, Max also expanded its availability last year through a
cross-platform bundling deal with Disney.
A Sustainable Legacy Streamer
Disney aside, however, Wall
Street has been looking to see when we would have one of the “legacy” Hollywood
studios make it into sustainable profitability. WBD CEO and President, David
Zaslav, also announced an ambitious target of $1B for 2025, alongside his
intent to exceed that. With them entering a full year of streaming
profitability, that may be an achievable target after all.
Overall, their balance
sheet is still addressing some notable gaps as a result of their recent merger,
including an overall loss of $11.3B, including restructuring expenses and
goodwill impairments. However, they are certainly sitting in a far more
favorable place overall than in the last few years.
Now, Max is set on making
it to the Top 3 list of streamers, with a separate focus on improving the
health of the studio business as well. Overall, it’s certainly been a positive
year for them, and it will be interesting to see if they can sustain this
growth and market dominance through the remainder of 2025 and meet their
ambitious goals.
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