Yahoo News Paramount’s Streaming Costs Neared $2.1 Billion in ‘Paramount+ with Showtime’ Launch Quarter
There were pluses and minuses at Paramount Global from April to June.
Paramount+ added 700,000 subscribers in the quarter that its top tier, now called Paramount+ with Showtime, was rebranded — and repriced. The core (there’s also BET+, Noggin, Pluto TV, and the Showtime OTT app) Paramount Global streaming service now has about 61 million subs, up from 60 million at the end of March.
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FAST leader Pluto TV no longer reports monthly active users, a Paramount rep told IndieWire via email. At the end of March, the number had been 80 million. Fellow streamers BET+ and Noggin are still on the sales block, and Showtime OTT is going away.
The company’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) business posted expenses of $2.1 billion in Q2, even higher than the $2 billion posted in Q1. That’s worse. (In the March quarter, Paramount began recognizing huge charges related to the integration of Showtime into Paramount+. Streaming losses had long been in full swing.)
Adjusted DTC operating loss (before depreciation and amortization) was $424 million in Q2; Q1’s loss was $511 million. That’s better.
Count Paramount+ among the streamers still seeking profitability. Paramount+ technically launched as CBS All Access back in October 2014. (It was rebranded and relaunched as Paramount+ in March 2021.)
Wall Street expected Paramount Global overall to lose 8 cents per share and report $7.43 billion in revenue. The company reported a loss of 59 cents per share on $7.616 billion in revenue. With adjustments and on a GAAP basis, Paramount can (and did) say it earned 10 cents per share.
At the close of trading on Monday, Paramount Global announced it had sold publishing house Simon & Schuster to investment firm KKR for $1.62 billion. Less than one year ago, Simon & Schuster was supposed to fetch $2 billion from Penguin Random House, but the merger was blocked by the Justice Department.
Paramount Pictures had a pretty light presence at the Q2 box office. Only the premiere day of “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” took place in Q1; the rest was Q2. The June quarter also included the first three weeks of “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.” Neither performed particularly well, but regardless of how they did, the prior year’s comparable quarter with “Top Gun: Maverick” was going to make for a miserable comparison. Specifically, filmed entertainment revenue sunk 39 percent vs. the comparable quarter last year.
TV advertising declined 10 percent from the second quarter of 2022.
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