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lightsongtheold t1_j9qx5ts wrote

During a call with investors, Gunnar Wiedenfels, the company’s chief financial officer, indicated a new projection for $4 billion in cost savings by the end of 2024, a new target.

Oof! Expect a new raft of content being cancelled and disappeared! So much for the worst of the gutting being over.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s TV networks, which also include Discovery, CNN and Food Network saw revenue fall 6% to roughly $5.5 billion, with declines evident in affiliate fees as well as advertising.

Remember when Zaslav said cable was the future? Anybody on Wall Street still dumb enough to believe that utter tosh?

Studios operations saw revenue fall about 23% as the company’ collected less from licensing of its content.

So making less TV shows and movies resulted in less revenue for the studios? Who could have seen this coming when the gutted HBO Max, sold the CW (WBTV’s best buyer), and made a total arse of Warner Bros movie output due to lack of investment?

Meanwhile, losses in its streaming operations narrowed. The operating loss in its streaming operations came to $217 million in the quarter for its streaming assets, compared with pro-forma losses of $728 million in the year-earlier period.

Finally some positive news. For all the groaning that streaming is a bust Zaslav has actually got HBO Max close to profitability in less than 9 months in charge. Year on year losses have improved significantly and the overall quarterly losses are nothing like those we see at rival media companies like Disney, Paramount, and NBCU. These numbers are in line with the lesser players like Lionsgate and AMC. They will probably be profitable by 2024.

The bad news was streamers additions of just 1.1 million. Missing the 1.6 million forecast. The cuts are getting them on the fast track to profitability but the cost is stalled or anaemic growth. Be interesting to see the Q1 additions. They had/have practically no content for the first 2.5 months but the one show they did offer was a massively big budget show that has delivered both in terms of acclaim and viewership. They also finish Q3 with a burst of content like Succession and Perry Mason to spark new acquisitions. Which should put them in a better position for gains than we seen in Q4 when they had a completely dead December in terms of content.

The other good news was the speed of the debt repayments. Debt now $45 billion. Down $7 billion in just 9 months. That is very impressive and exactly what Zaslav and Malone need for keeping this pump and dump on schedule. A year or two more of this and they will have WBD looking like an attractive buy again with a far more reasonable debt load.

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Gooman422 t1_j9s0c4n wrote

You should do the quarterly calls haha. Very informative but concise.

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cabose7 t1_j9t6pws wrote

>Finally some positive news. For all the groaning that streaming is a bust Zaslav has actually got HBO Max close to profitability in less than 9 months in charge.

Warners prior to Discovery was trying to expand HBO Max through big ticket spending, of course he was able to cut costs significantly by completely abandoning that strategy.

That isn't some brilliant idea. He just gave up on building a big streaming service.

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wacct3 t1_j9v0v5g wrote

If they lost 2 billion dollars how did they repay 7 billion in debt? Or does that loss include them paying down the debt?

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lightsongtheold t1_j9v61zw wrote

It included them paying debt. It was an on paper loss. They were actually free cash flow positive and had better year on year free cash flow vs the same quarter of the previous year. The $7 billion debt repayments was spread over the last 9 months. The $2 billion reported loss was over the last 3 months.

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