Shares in Warner Bros Discovery Inc (NASDAQ:WBD, ETR:J5A) fell by around 2% in Thursday’s trade after the media conglomerate reported a 10% drop in first-quarter revenue, to $8.98 billion.
The parent company of media brands including Max, HBO, WB, Discovery, TNT, DC Comics, and CNN made a net loss of $453 million over the three month period.
Albeit, this represents a narrowing of losses compared with the $966 million shortfall for the same period 12 months ago.
Earnings (adjusted EBITDA) was seen as stable at $2.11 billion, up 4% on a constant currency basis.
Streaming revenues were up 9% at $2.66 billion, with subscriber-related revenue up 10%, and total global subscribers across all brands grew by 5.3 million users to 122.3 million (for context, Netflix has around 300 million paying subscribers and Disney+ has just over 235 million).
The ‘linear TV’ business, meanwhile, saw a 6% decline in revenue, and the Studios business saw a 16% drop amid weaker theatrical and gaming performance across the group’s IP.
Free cash flow declined by 23% to $302 million. And, the company repaid $2.2 billion of debt – leaving it with $4 billion of cash and $38 billion of gross debt at quarter’s end.
In New York, Warner Bros Discovery stock was down 2.1% at $8.38.