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Saar13 t1_j9qs30u wrote

Reply to comment by Dangerous-Hawk16 in Warner Bros. Discovery Sees $2.1 Billion Loss in Q4 After Big Writedown; Ad Sales Tumble by Neo2199

They will come to Q1 2023 very pressured. The Last of Us has good ratings, but what will that mean in subscriber earnings for HBO/HBOMax? If they continue with these successive minimum increases, they will have serious problems in maintaining a minimum of investor confidence. Even more so now that Wall Street seems to have had enough of believing in streaming.

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52ndstreet t1_j9raq6h wrote

I don’t know that Wall Street doesn’t believe in streaming anymore, per se. But I think everyone now realizes that the notion of unlimited growth in the sector is fiction and the streamers need to run their business in a way that makes them profitable without relying on attracting hordes of new subscribers.

But as a business model, Netflix brings in roughly $2.6 Billion per month. (Source: Netflix 10k report, Q4 2022). So they have a lot of money coming in every month. Wall Street can absolutely believe in a business that brings in $33.61 Billion per year.

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NeoNoireWerewolf t1_j9tvvgq wrote

All the trade outlets for the industry have been reporting on how the studios are cooling on streaming and looking at new ways to try and make money on it. Netflix is the only streamer that isn’t setting fire to mountains of cash right now, with Amazon and Apple being the others that look sustainable solely because their movie/TV divisions are small investments offset by their lucrative retail and tech businesses. All of the traditional studios, though? They’re hurting, and everybody in the industry is lost as to what the hell the future looks like. With all the guilds prepping for a possible strike to negotiate for a bigger cut of streaming this year, as well, there’s a crazy amount of uncertainty within the business about the future. Cable is in its twilight years, physical media is now exclusively for a niche audience, movie theaters are struggling to draw audiences, and streaming is unsustainable for most studios. It’s bad news on every front.

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SupervillainEyebrows t1_j9wnuia wrote

Do you think this is going to cause more monopolisation?

Massive companies like Amazon that can afford to run at a loss because of other revenue streams buying up all the media companies who are floundering?

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Brainiac7777777 t1_j9u9yzq wrote

I’m confused wouldn’t Warner Bros be a small investment for AT&T since it’s a really big company like Apple and Amazon

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NeoNoireWerewolf t1_j9um5j3 wrote

AT&T doesn’t own Warner Media anymore; Discovery does. That’s why Warner is in so much debt; AT&T has been a horribly run company for years and had amassed an insane amount of debt. They decided to redistribute a huge chunk of that debt (~$50 billion) to Warner Media when spinning the company off to Discovery. That’s why there’s been a bloodbath at Warner under the new boss Zaslav - the company is going under if they don’t shed a shit ton of debt in the coming years. AT&T was pumping out tons of content in an effort to make HBO Max a Netflix competitor, but the problem is HBO Max hasn’t really grown much since launching three years ago. AT&T also gutted things like DC Comics, pondered selling off the entire video game division at one point (which Zaslav rightfully sees as a huge potential moneymaker and wants more funding to go towards), and managed to weaken major IP like Harry Potter and DC. That’s not getting into AT&T’s comical business blunders like buying DirecTV while cable is dying. They may be a big company, but AT&T is absolutely inept when compared to major players like Amazon and Apple. If Discovery can’t pay off it’s debts and Warner Media folds with them, then the death of one of the legacy studios is on AT&T’s hands, not Discovery’s. I’m not convinced the company is necessarily going to be in better hands with Discovery, but at this point it has a chance of surviving, at least.

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Radulno t1_j9sslwu wrote

Netflix is profitable since a few years with around 4-5 billions profits per year. But Netflix is also having far more subscribers than the others so maybe that's the key. HBO Max still should search subscriber growth, they are far from the level of Netflix.

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SupervillainEyebrows t1_j9wo5f3 wrote

HBO Max isn't available everywhere that the other streamers are as well.

I know we don't get it here in the UK because of WB's deals with Sky.

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smokeyjay t1_j9riruu wrote

A lot of that money is spent on new content to remain competitive. Actual net revenue is more like 1-2 billion annually.

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Radulno t1_j9sssa5 wrote

In 2021, it was 5.1 billions and 4.5 billions in 2022 so a little more

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Radulno t1_j9sshpt wrote

If they want subscribers, they maybe should have not stopped their international expansion. Tons of places don't have HBO Max

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