A sign outside of the Warner Brothers Discovery Techwood Turner Broadcasting campus is seen on June 26, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Warner Bros. Discovery said Thursday it added 6.4 million global streaming subscribers in the fourth quarter for a total of 116.9 million subscribers.
Fourth-quarter revenue for the streaming segment, which is anchored by flagship service Max, totaled $2.65 billion, up 5% from $2.53 billion in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the unit came in at $409 million, compared with an adjusted EBITDA loss of $55 million in the fourth quarter of 2023.
In a shareholder letter, the media and entertainment company forecast adjusted EBITDA of $1.3 billion for its streaming business for the year — roughly double the $677 million adjusted EBITDA it reported for 2024 — and said it has a “clear path” to hit 150 million global subscribers by the end of 2026. Max is set to launch on television service Sky in the United Kingdom and Ireland by the second quarter of 2026, and will debut in Germany and Italy in the first quarter of that year.
“In this generational media disruption, only the global streamers will survive and prosper, and Max is just that,” CEO David Zaslav said on the company’s earnings call Thursday.
WBD announced Wednesday that Max would keep its B/R Sports and CNN content available at no additional cost to subscribers in its standard and premium tiers. Initially WBD planned to charge an additional cost for sports.
However, it will pull both verticals from its basic, ad-supported tier beginning March 30.
On the earnings call, JB Perrette, CEO and president of global streaming and games, said the company would continue to experiment with its news and sports business models.
While sports have increased their presence on streaming services recently, with platforms like Netflix adding to their live sports portfolios, Zaslav said the company is more focused on maximizing its returns than acquiring more sports content.
Warner Bros. Discovery is losing U.S. distribution rights to National Basketball Association games starting next season. It still has a U.S. sports portfolio that includes the French Open, Major League Baseball, college football and the National Hockey League.
“We don’t need any more sports anywhere in the world in order to support our business,” Zaslav said, adding that he expects it will become more difficult to obtain sports rights with increasing prices and competition.
On the news front, Zaslav said Warner Bros. Discovery expected CNN to see more benefit from the 2024 presidential election that ultimately did not materialize. CNN, along with MSNBC, saw its ratings fall drastically after the election, while Fox News enjoyed strong ratings in that period.
Shares of WBD rose nearly 5% Thursday.
Here’s how Warner Bros. Discovery performed in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on…