WBD Says Soft Ad Market Hit Revenue in Q1
Warner Bros. Discovery's (WBD) U.S. direct-to-consumer (DTC) business "is no longer a bleeder" and should turn a profit this year, CEO David Zaslav said Friday as the company announced Q1 results. He said its Max streaming service combining HBO Max…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
and Discovery+ offerings will launch May 23 in the U.S., with Latin America to follow later in the year and Europe, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and Africa in 2024. He said WBD plans to expand Max's offerings with news and sports. WBD said it added 1.6 million DTC subscribers worldwide in the quarter. Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels said the company's DTC business should generate at least $1 billion in profitability in 2025. He said a lot of the roughly 4 million overlapping HBO Max/Discovery+ subscribers will likely drop Discovery+ in the first few months of the Max launch, though the company will keep Discovery+ going as a stand-alone product. WBD said revenue for the quarter was $10.7 billion, down 6% year over year on a pro forma basis. Zaslav said a soft advertising market hurt revenue. Paramount Global similarly told investors last week a soft ad market was hurting revenue (see 2305040072).