How the Streamers Stack Up Right Now in Subscribers and Revenue | Charts

Despite the dual Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA strikes looming large over this earnings season, the major legacy media companies all made progress on their paths to streaming profits.

Netflix extended its lead on the subscriber front as Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney+ posted quarterly declines. Meanwhile, Hulu, Paramount+ and Peacock all saw steady subscriber gains for their latest quarters.

With Wall Street watching streaming economics closely, Hulu, Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney+ all made progress toward narrowing the gap with Netflix on average revenue per user. Paramount+ and Peacock do not break out their quarterly ARPU figures.

This analysis doesn’t include Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+ because those companies don’t release streaming subscriber or ARPU figures.

Apple reported over 1 billion paid subscriptions in its Services segment for its latest quarter, which includes Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+, Apple News+, Apple Music and iCloud. In 2021, Amazon reported more than 200 million Prime members worldwide and said over 175 million of them had streamed its film and television content in the past year.

Check out TheWrap’s quarterly deep dive on each company below, with the freshest numbers straight from their financial disclosures.

Netflix

Netflix added 5.9 million subscribers during the second quarter of 2023, ending June with a total of 238.4 million globally. The streaming behemoth posted net income of $1.48 billion, or diluted earnings per share of $3.29, on revenue of $8.2 billion.

Average revenue per user came in at $16 in the United States and Canada, $10.87 in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, $8.58 in Latin America and $7.66 in the Asia-Pacific region. Revenue in the U.S. and Canada remained flat at $3.6 billion and fell 1% year over year in Latin America to $1.07 billion, 3% year over year in the EMEA region to $2.5 billion and 13% year over year in the APAC region to $919 million.

Netflix’s ad tier has grown to over 10 million monthly active users, doubling from the nearly 5 million MAUs disclosed at its presentation to advertisers in May. However, current ad revenue is not material for the company, it said, due to a relatively small subscriber base for the ad tier.

In May, Netflix rolled out its paid sharing initiative in over 100 countries, representing more than 80% of its revenue base. According to the company, revenue in each region is now higher than pre-launch, with sign-ups exceeding cancellations.

“The cancel reaction was low, and while we’re still in the early stages of monetization, we’re seeing healthy conversion of borrower households into full paying Netflix memberships as well as the uptake of our extra member feature,” the company said in its quarterly shareholder letter.

Looking ahead, Netflix expects revenue growth to accelerate in the remainder of the year as it expands its password-sharing crackdown and subscriptions to its ad-supported tier grow. For the third quarter, the company is expecting revenue of $8.5 billion, a 7% year-over-year increase, and paid net adds similar to the second quarter. It also anticipates free cash flow of at least $5 billion for 2023, up from its previous estimate of at least $3.5 billion.

“Our updated expectation reflects lower cash content spend in 2023 than we originally anticipated due to timing of production starts and the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes,” the company said. “While this may create some lumpiness in [free cash flow] from 2023 to 2024, we plan to deliver substantial positive [free cash flow] in 2024.”

Disney+

Disney+ reported a total of 146.1 million subscribers for the quarter, a decrease of 11.7 million from 157.8 million in the previous quarter. The figure included 105.7 million core subscribers, including 46 million in the U.S. and Canada, a decrease of 300,00o from the previous quarter, and 59.7 million international subscribers (excluding Disney+ Hotstar), an increase of 1.1 million.

Disney+ Hotstar subscribers fell to 40.4 million from 52.9 million in the previous quarter, a decrease of 12.5 million. The decline follows a Wall Street Journal report that Disney is considering a sale or joint venture for its digital and TV business in India, which includes Hotstar and Star India.

Average monthly revenue per paid subscriber for domestic Disney+ increased from $7.14 to $7.31 due to higher per-subscriber advertising revenue. International Disney+ ARPU (excluding Disney+ Hotstar) increased from $5.93 to $6.01 due to an increase in average retail pricing and a favorable foreign exchange impact, partially offset by a higher mix of wholesale subscribers. Disney+ Hotstar ARPU remained steady at 59 cents.

Disney said 3.3 million subscribers signed up to its ad-supported Disney+ offering in the U.S. as of the end of the third quarter. Disney+ plans to roll out an ad-supported tier in select markets across Europe and in Canada beginning Nov. 1. As pricing is updated for various plans later this year, subscribers in the U.S. will have access to a new ad-free bundled subscription plan starting Sept. 6, featuring Disney+ Premium and Hulu (No Ads) for $19.99 per month. The timing of this new Disney+/Hulu bundle also coincides with some other price increases, which include Disney+ (no ads) going to $13.99 a month, Hulu (no ads) going to $17.99 and ESPN+ (with ads) going to $10.99.

In the fiscal fourth quarter, Disney expects a rebound in core Disney+ net adds with growth both domestically and internationally. It also anticipates that DTC ad revenue will continue to benefit from higher advertiser demand at Hulu as well as from the ramp-up of the Disney+ ad tier. Additionally, the company expects the content sales, licensing and other segment to generate operating losses up to $100 million worse than the fourth quarter of 2022.

CEO Bob Iger also said that Disney would cut its content budget for fiscal 2023 by $3 billion to approximately $27 billion in total spending, in part due to the SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes. During the quarter, Disney recorded $2.4 billion in charges related to the removal of content related to its DTC services and the termination of certain third-party license agreements.

The company is also “actively exploring” ways to crack down on password sharing and plans to “roll out tactics to drive monetization sometime in 2024.”

Hulu

Hulu reported a total of 48.3 million subscribers, an increase of 100,000 compared to the previous quarter. The figure included 44 million SVOD-only subscribers, an increase of 300,000 compared to the previous quarter, and 4.3 million Live TV and SVOD subscribers, a decrease of 100,000.

Hulu’s SVOD-only ARPU increased from $11.73 to $12.39 due to higher per-subscriber advertising revenue, while Hulu Live TV + SVOD ARPU decreased from $92.32 to $91.80. The decrease was driven by lower per-subscriber subscription revenue due to a shift of subscribers between bundled services, partially offset by higher per-subscriber advertising revenue.

Disney is planning to add Hulu content to the Disney+ app under a combined subscription by the end of 2023.

Paramount+

Paramount Global’s direct-to-consumer division, which includes Paramount+ and Pluto, a free, ad-supported streaming service, saw revenue of $1.7 billion, up 40% year over year. The segment’s adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to $424 million, compared to $511 million last quarter and $445 million a year ago. Paramount+ subscribers increased by 700,000 in the quarter to 61 million.

In June, the company officially rolled out its integration of Paramount+ and Showtime, which is expected to generate $700 million of expense savings for the company. The move was accompanied by price increases on some streaming tiers. Paramount recorded $697 million in programming charges in connection with the combination.

Executives expect subscriber growth at Paramount+ to be higher in the latter half of 2023 than the first half. They also anticipate peak DTC investment in 2023 with “significant growth in consolidated earnings in 2024.”

“The quarterly cadence of net adds will reflect the timing of our content slate and the rollout timing of Paramount+ with Showtime with our third-party distribution partners,” chief financial officer Naveen Chopra told analysts during the company’s earnings call. The company anticipates losing 1 million customers in Latin America with the wind-down of a bundling deal there, but said that would be “immaterial” to revenue.

Max and Discovery+

Warner Bros. Discovery’s direct to consumer division lost 1.8 million subscribers across Max and Discovery+ during the quarter for a total of 95.8 million globally. The rebrand of HBO Max to Max officially rolled out on May 23.

The segment posted an adjusted EBITDA loss of $3 million, a $555 million year-over-year improvement, while revenue climbed 14% year over year to $2.73 billion. Executives said its streaming business in the U.S. remains on track to reach profitability in 2023. Average revenue per user came in at $11.09 domestically, $3.65 internationally and $7.71 globally.

The new Max combined Discovery+ reality and lifestyle shows with HBO Max’s more upscale programming, and the company anticipated losing some customers who subscribed to both services.

But Warner Bros. Discovery saw “several hundred thousand subscribers churn off during the quarter, meaningfully less than we had anticipated,” chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels told analysts on the earnings call. It expects to keep offering the cheaper standalone Discovery+ service alongside Max.

Wiedenfels estimated that the savings from the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes were in the “low $100 million range” during the second quarter.

Looking ahead, Warner Bros. Discovery said it expects to generate cash flow in the “$1.7 billion ballpark” in the third quarter and $4.5 billion to $5 billion for full year 2023. The forecast assumes cash restructuring and integration-related costs of roughly $1.2 billion for 2023. The company expects adjusted EBITDA for the year to settle towards the low end of its target range of $11 billion to $11.5 billion. In the DTC segment, WBD expects EBITDA losses of “no more than a couple hundred million dollars” for full year 2023.

Peacock

Peacock added 2 million net paid subscribers during the quarter for a total of 24 million.

The streamer posted revenue of $820 million, up from $444 million in the prior year period. But its adjusted EBITDA loss widened to $651 million from $467 million a year ago. Comcast chief financial officer Jason Armstrong said there is “no change” to the company’s guidance that Peacock will hit peak losses of around $3 billion in 2023.

To help Peacock reach profitability, NBCUniversal is hiking prices on its Premium and Premium Plus subscription tiers to $5.99 and $11.99 per month respectively. Comcast president Mike Cavanagh added that the company is “not quite halfway through” its mission to convert Comcast subscribers over to a paying subscriber status on Peacock.

“When you look at the doubling of Peacock subs year over year, I’m optimistic about what the second half of the year brings,” he said.

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