Warner Bros. Discovery Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 7, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Studios business delivered unprecedented creative and box office success, becoming the first studio to open five consecutive films with over $45 million domestic box office, leading the Emmys with 142 nominations, and on track for at least $2.4 billion in adjusted EBITDA in 2025.
  • Positive Sentiment: HBO Max added more than 3.4 million subscribers in Q2, with the streaming business set to exceed $1.3 billion in adjusted EBITDA in 2025 and reach over 150 million subscribers by 2026.
  • Negative Sentiment: A legacy U.S. distribution deal reset will dampen HBO Max revenue growth through 2025, with reacceleration expected once the reset laps in 2026.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company has delevered its balance sheet from over 5x net leverage to 3.3x, its lowest level since the merger closed.
  • Positive Sentiment: Discovery Global plans to retain full sports rights rather than sublicensing, developing a standalone streaming sports product and bundling opportunities with HBO Max to maximize direct-to-consumer reach.
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Earnings Conference Call
Warner Bros. Discovery Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Warner Bros. Discovery Second Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participant lines are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Additionally, please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded.

Operator

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Andrew Slabin, Executive Vice President, Global Investor Strategy. You may now begin.

Andrew Slabin
Andrew Slabin
EVP - Global Investor Strategy & IR at Warner Bros. Discovery

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for Warner Bros. Discovery's Q2 earnings call. Joining me today is David Zaslov, President and Chief Executive Officer Gunnar Viedenfels, Chief Financial Officer and JB Perrette, CEO and President, Global Streaming and Games. Today's presentation will include forward looking statements that we made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The forward looking statements may include comments regarding the company's future business plans, prospects and financial performance and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations.

Andrew Slabin
Andrew Slabin
EVP - Global Investor Strategy & IR at Warner Bros. Discovery

For additional information on factors that could affect these expectations, please see the company's filings with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, the company's most recent annual report on Form 10 ks and its reports on Form 10 Q and Form eight ks. In addition, we will discuss non GAAP financial measures on this call. Reconciliations of these non GAAP financial measures to the closest GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release and in our trending schedules, which can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website.

Andrew Slabin
Andrew Slabin
EVP - Global Investor Strategy & IR at Warner Bros. Discovery

And with that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to David.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

Good morning and thank you all for joining us. Our top strategic objectives have always been clear: To be the premier home for the world's most creative talent, both in front of and behind the camera. To operate as the world's largest, highest quality maker and producer of film and television. And to distribute those stories to audiences worldwide through a globally scaled profitable streaming service. In the second quarter and in the early weeks of the third quarter, Warner Bros.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

Led with strong momentum in delivering on all three of those objectives. We're seeing that momentum at Motion Pictures, where Warner Bros. Became the first studio ever to open five consecutive films with more than 45,000,000 in domestic box office. We're seeing that at the Emmys, where Warner Brothers TV led all studios in nominations, and HBO set a new record with 142 nominations. We're seeing it in the strong critical and fan response to Superman, which begins an exciting new era for DC studios And we're thrilled to share that James Gunn is already writing and preparing to direct the next installment within the Super family.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

And we're seeing it at HBO Max, which again added more than 3,400,000 subscribers in Q2 as it continues to launch in markets around the world. This pattern of creative success is the result of a three plus year attack plan aimed at enhancing every dimension of our creative culture and storytelling business. From HBO to Warner Brothers television, to Warner Brothers pictures, and from animation to DC studios, we've invested in our studio's creative and operational capabilities. As a result, our Studios business is now on track to deliver at least $2,400,000,000 in adjusted EBITDA in 2025 with our sights set on our $3,000,000,000 goal. We have transformed HBO Max and have our streaming business on track to exceed $1,300,000,000 in adjusted EBITDA in 2025 and reach over 150,000,000 subscribers by the 2026.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

And from CNN to TNT Sports, we are bringing innovation to news, sports and unscripted programming as we work to optimize our global networks. All the while, we've dramatically delevered our balance sheet from over five times net leverage to 3.3 times now, the lowest since our merger closed. As we continue to navigate generational disruption and move forward with splitting into two independent publicly traded companies in 2026, Our current momentum will help position both future organizations for long term success. With that, we look forward to your questions.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer And the first question comes from Robert Fishman with MoffettNathanson. Please go ahead.

Robert Fishman
Senior Research Analyst at Moffettnathanson LLC

Good morning. I have one question for each company, Warner Brothers and Discovery. Can you each talk about your content licensing strategies? David, you shared in the letter that the 5,000,000,000 annual library revenues from Warner Brothers TV and film and balancing that trade off. So would you be more open to licensing the Warner Brothers and HBO content to third party streamers now going forward?

Robert Fishman
Senior Research Analyst at Moffettnathanson LLC

And then for Gunnar, can you talk about your approach to overall content licensing, but especially with regards to your sports rights, especially in light of, the potential of sublicensing these rights to ESPN or other streamers? Thanks so much.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

Thanks, Robert. Well, look. One of the the great building blocks of our studio business is we have the largest TV and motion picture library in the world. And that is like a long cycle business that we can look at as a steady stream. Having said that, we've made a number of judgments, including this year where we've opted to sell significantly less than we could into the streaming market as well as the traditional market because we're seeing such growth and we're driving towards such growth for our studio business, which includes our streaming, HBO Max.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

And so we think in order to differentiate HBO Max, it's important that there there are a a wealth of properties, quality properties that reinforce you only get this at at HBO Max. And that's working for us in terms of driving growth. It's working for us as as people more more and more seeing HBO Max as the premier quality service around the world and storytelling. And so, it's it's really a decision to fight for asset value and growth rather than near term value. And we did walk away, and I expect that we will continue to because we're seeing very good trends as we grow around the world.

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

Yeah. And Robert, maybe just to add one point to what David said, and we try to shed a little bit of light on this in our letter this quarter as well. It is important to understand that we have, very significantly shifted the mix between external and internal content sales over the past three years, and that has sort of, put pressure on our near term financial results. But we have put a 10 digit figure of value in terms of intercompany profits parked on the balance sheet that's going to come back into the P and L over the next few years as JB utilizes this content, and Casey utilizes this content on the HBO Max platform. So there's we have taken a short term financial hit for some some real value that's gonna flow through, and that's a that's a significant amount. The

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

One of the real, I think, advantages of of running Warner as one company is HBO was the premier producer of quality, storytelling, and Warner Brothers television was the premier producer of TV series. But they didn't work together very much. We now have Channing and Casey working together. So we innovated with The Pit as a procedural that was, you know, very, very successful for us, and that'll be coming back in January, nine months after 15 episodes came off. They're working together with JK Rowling on Harry Potter, which is extremely promising and is already in production and will be doing ten consecutive years.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

So this idea of aligning the best the best TV production quality production company in the world And and having some of that best work, not all of it, you know, Ted Lasso shrinking, presumed innocent. We do a lot of of content for others, but but more coordination going to HBO Max for a net value and a net positive that will drive sustainable growth at HBO Max.

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

Alright. Alright. And then, Robert, for Discovery Global, there were really two questions. One on general, content licensing and then the sports, question. Let me start with the entertainment content first.

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

You know, one thing that has already happened and that I expect to to become more of a factor going forward as a separate company is we are reimagining The US networks portfolio really as a a content engine around, you know, very strong unscripted brands, and not so much as sort of just traditional linear networks. And as part of that, certainly all monetization forms will play a a greater role and and content licensing is definitely one factor or one tool in the box here. So it's going to be a meaningful contribution going forward as we think about recovering our content investments. I will say that for the current trends, 2024 was a year where we really started, you know, firing that up a little bit, and 2024 also had some unusually high content licensing numbers. And that's a factor that I also wanted to call out for the second half year.

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

We had $580,000,000 of Networks content sales in the 2024. That's above a more normalized run rate of roughly $200,000,000 a quarter or so. So that's definitely factor, as as we think about the rest of the year and and and going forward. On the sports side, again, never say never, but I I I will say the following. You know, we love the sports portfolio that we have.

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

Luis and the team have done great work restructuring this over the past two years and we've got a very, very strong portfolio, all the key franchises. And it's going to be even more important as we look at Discovery Global as a separate standalone entity. So we will continue with an important sports strategy. We will continue to be looking at investments with the same discipline that we have in the past. And with that, I think it's unlikely that that we will self license rights out.

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

In fact, if you look at what we've done recently with the college football playoffs, you know, the two games this year growing to five games next year, we have, anything, taken on a little more. And then the final thing I'll say is, I don't think there is a need to sublicense, if that's sort of the direction of your question. In fact, Luis and the team are working hard on developing the go to market approach to utilize our streaming rights going forward. And, you know, the the the the broad strokes are it's gonna be a a stand alone product that we will be able to take direct to the consumer, but also, bundle, you know, with HBO Max, with Discovery plus potentially third parties, again, all in the spirit of making our content available to as many people as possible. So, you know, lots to work through, and stay tuned.

Andrew Slabin
Andrew Slabin
EVP - Global Investor Strategy & IR at Warner Bros. Discovery

Great. Let's go to the next question, please.

Operator

Your next question comes from Jessica Reif Ehrlich with Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Managing Director at Bank of America Securities

Good morning. Thank you. Two questions also. David, like you've been developing a lot and have a lot of franchises. You've mentioned Harry Potter, now Superman.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich
Managing Director at Bank of America Securities

Can you talk about what else you see as as as future franchises and kind of the halo effect that the success can have on the entire organization from theatrical licensing, streaming games, merchandise, etcetera. And then, Gunnar, now that you're becoming the CEO of Global Networks, it's a it's a segment that's obviously been challenged from just the secular challenges. Can you talk about what you see as the, like, underappreciated opportunity for growth in this business?

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

Thanks, Jessica. You know, I've I've said all along that, one of the assets that we have at this company is that we have such, so much compelling, storytelling IP that people know everywhere in the world, whether it's Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Lord of the Rings, you know, and and then we'll call those the big the big tentpoles, Harry Potter. And then, you know, smaller tentpoles like the Fugitive, Goonies, Gremlins that everybody knows. And a piece of our strategy is light up strategically those big tentpoles so that we have two or three of those a year, which provide real stability. We got a great script on Lord of the Rings with Peter Jackson that we're already that we're moving forward on, and we'll be giving you more detail on that.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

We're working very hard on Wonder Woman. We already have a big piece of the DC strategy laid out. But we effectively have four studios. So we have so one is developing DC. We've talked about that.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

The second is Warner. And half of what Mike and Pam are doing is things like Lord of the Rings or Gremlins or Goonies or or practical magic going back to things people know. And the other half is new stories, you know, like like sinners. And then we have, New Line, which we New Line is back to what they do better than anybody in the world, which is horror. And, you know, if you for those of you that that that have a free moment this weekend, you know, go see Weapons and just hold on to your seat because it's an incredible ride.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

They're having New Line is back in its lane, and we expect to do a number of those a year together with some comedies, which is part of the great heritage of New Line. And then animation, we have Cat in the Hat coming in January with Bill Demanski. And so we have a very balanced portfolio that's much more focused on the economics of each of these and having that and since our IP has been underused, no Superman in fourteen years, no Lord of the Rings in thirteen years, that to go back and to be able to bring a lot of those franchises back to life and also tell new and original stories. So we feel really good about where we are. When we project this year for the Motion Picture Group, we're conservative.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

We understand that the Motion Picture business, in the end, the audience will decide. We've had an extraordinary run. We were in last place, and we came Mike and Pam and DC and New Line together went from last to first. Disney is a little bit ahead right now, and we're looking forward to what we think will be a good weekend. But we're having we're really making the turn.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

It's been three years of investment, and you're going to start to see these products roll out, and you'll see them roll out strategically and with real focus on cost. And finally, we have a big advantage, I think, in the way that we're marketing these films. We've spent years getting them ready, and we have a real global attack that you saw with Barbie, you saw with Wonka, you saw with Superman, you saw it with f one when Apple came to us uniquely and wanted us to take it on. And so I think that we have real momentum there.

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

Okay. And Jessica, on the on the global network side, look, this it's it's a legitimate question, of course, and and the number one question maybe. I have to, tell you the thing that excites me the most, about the the the future here is I will have the privilege to work with, you know, maybe the greatest team I've ever, I've ever seen in my career. I've known many of, these people for for years, and it's a team that has a track record of of fighting to win. And it's a team that's that's, everywhere in the world.

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

And, I've spent a good part of my time over the past eight weeks, you know, traveling around and and and meeting, a lot of the people, across the Discovery Global footprint. And I I, I can tell you the the level of excitement, creativity, and energy that's, that's coming through in these meetings is is off the charts. And one, one big factor here is that people understand that we're building a, a group of assets here that is, set up to thrive and and and, continue to prosper on a stand alone basis. You know, we've already talked about the changes we're making to the perimeter, all of US sports coming, with Discovery Global, Discovery Plus moving over. We have, Bleacher Report, and we have a an international free to air footprint with very different secular trends than what you're seeing here in The US.

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

So and the ability to focus on these assets and nothing else, you know, is exciting me and is exciting the team, you know, everywhere and with everybody I've spoken so far. And it it won't mean that we're gonna change the, secular trends, but I do I do believe that there are, very significant pockets of growth and and opportunity, and we'll work really hard over the half year here to identify those and get in position to deliver what I think is going to be a much a business with much more longevity than what the market sees right now.

Andrew Slabin
Andrew Slabin
EVP - Global Investor Strategy & IR at Warner Bros. Discovery

Great. Thanks Jessica. Next question please.

Operator

Your next question comes from Michael Ng with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Michael Ng
Michael Ng
MD - Global Investment Research at Goldman Sachs

Hi, good morning. Thank you for the question. I just have two. First on Studio and Live Events. I was just wondering, given all the investments that you're making in DC and the early success of the DC reboot, Are you revisiting what DC is doing in terms of theme parks and live events?

Michael Ng
Michael Ng
MD - Global Investment Research at Goldman Sachs

I know there's the licensing deal with Six Flags, but against the backdrop of something like the success of Harry Potter or Universal, was just wondering if there was an opportunity to revisit what you're doing with the DTC franchises in parks? And then I have a quick follow-up.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

Thanks, Michael. We think there's a tremendous amount of untapped value. First, generically, we have a lot of upside. We make about when we took over three years ago, about $0.22 for every dollar that Disney makes in circulating their IP through the system. We're up to about $0.30 now.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

Harry Potter is different. We're extremely effective in monetizing that through gaming and through a very mutually beneficial deal with Universal and Harry Potter parks that we have. And that was kind of a framework for us to go on the attack. Bruce Campbell is running that business. He we announced he will be the COO of our new business.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

And we think that's a real growth opportunity for us. We've gotten back some of our rights that were given to Six Flags and freed up DC in a way that we think can be very compelling. Lot of those rights weren't tied up at all outside The U. S. And they're we're we're in different stages of, deploying, those assets.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

We're not going to, we're not going to build theme parks ourselves, but there were some like Harry Potter. Those are it's not a theme park, but it's that's a that's if you look at Lee's Den, we went into Japan. Japan is both of those are sold out for over a year. We're looking at expanding that. And some of it will be either a little bit of ownership or licensing.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

We're already doing something like that in Saudi Arabia, which is quite lucrative. So the answer is, yes. And there's more than just DC and Harry Potter. And you saw it with Superman, the way Bruce and the team deployed Superman across all the merchandising elements. It was quite effective, and we ended up with a with a lot more economic value.

Michael Ng
Michael Ng
MD - Global Investment Research at Goldman Sachs

Great. Thank you, David. That's very helpful. And then for Gunnar, I was just wondering if you could talk about the comments in the letter related to the HBO Max U. S.

Michael Ng
Michael Ng
MD - Global Investment Research at Goldman Sachs

Distribution deal restructuring. What was the nature of that? And what drives the reacceleration after the 2026? Thank you.

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

Yeah. Michael, it's essentially as we laid out in the letter. We had a legacy deal with a former affiliated party. And it's not unusual once those come up for renewal that priority shifts, and we've taken a bit of an adjustment, of the rates. That's what we wanted to call it out because it's going to have a meaningful impact on our revenue growth for a twelve month period until we lap this deal.

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

But it's also important to note that we expect a reacceleration not only once we lap this deal, but also from the various market launches that we have in the pipeline beginning 2026. Don't

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

know, JB, you may

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

want to

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

add to that. One quick thing. It's not Saudi Arabia, it's Abu Dhabi. So sorry about that. But go ahead, JB.

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

Yes. I think in terms of the HBO Max and the streaming profile, as Lueder said, it will certainly dampen the growth rates for the 2025. The reacceleration drivers are going to be starting in the 2025. Obviously, big new international launches coming from Europe. So on a global basis, we'll start to see revenue reaccelerate in the first half, really in the 2026.

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

And then The U. S. Growth will reaccelerate starting in the 2026 as we lap that reset.

Michael Ng
Michael Ng
MD - Global Investment Research at Goldman Sachs

Great. Thank you very much.

Andrew Slabin
Andrew Slabin
EVP - Global Investor Strategy & IR at Warner Bros. Discovery

Next question please. Thanks Michael.

Operator

Your next question comes from John Hodulik with UBS. Please go ahead.

John Hodulik
John Hodulik
Telecom & Cable Analyst at UBS Group

Two if I could. First, can you talk a little bit about some of the underlying drivers of ARPU? You've seen some more dilution as we move through the year here. And David, just your thoughts around pricing power of the MAX product. And then maybe secondly for Gunnar, just with the NBA law coming up in the fourth quarter, called out the impact there.

John Hodulik
John Hodulik
Telecom & Cable Analyst at UBS Group

Just any other sort of color you can give us from either a revenue or overall profitability standpoint as you lap that contract? Thanks.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

So let me just start. The number one objective was to establish HBO Max as the premier highest quality storytelling platform and have it be the place that people go. And Casey and the team, HBO Max or HBO itself has never been stronger, has never had more hits. And so we're really they're having a great run. And when we talked about it's not how much, it's how good, we've really delivered on that and consumers are seeing it and it's translating into real demand and growth.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

But our strategy hasn't been to try and raise a lot of price. We want the market to accept the product, to recognize it as high quality, and then first to start to narrow down the ability for multiple users to be using the product. But yes, that when you have the highest quality product in the market with big branded stories that people want to come back to that they feel very passionate about, that gives us what we think is a very big upside over time, to raise price on the highest quality service. But JB, why don't you talk a little bit about what you're seeing in the market and how that will lay out?

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

Yes. I think the to add on to it, I think the exciting thing for us is that, obviously, post both COVID and then the strikes, mean, I we've all taken a little while to get our sea legs back and more consistent. And the combination of those being through and a refined and much more rigorous content strategy that's based on fifty two weeks a year of programming with a constantly iterating and better data sets to look at what's working and what's not working. We feel as we look ahead at the next twenty four months of our slate, twenty five as we said, I think on previous calls, the slate was stronger than '24, '26 looks stronger than '25. And as we look at '27, the early parts of '27, the engine just keeps getting better.

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

And so a lot of that, to David's point, we want to be smart around still making the product. We think there's still a lot of upside in terms of the scale and penetration of the product. So we want to keep it affordable and grow penetration in these markets. But at the same time, with the quality of the slate, the return obviously to HBO Max as a brand and what that stands for from a premium standpoint, we do think there's obviously meaningful growth also coming from price acceleration over the next couple of years.

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

Right. And then on the, on on the NBA deal, look, as reminder, obviously, for many of these sports rights, the the the main monetization engine is is the affiliate revenue. So if you look at just, in advertising and content cost as a differential, you know, those deals are are loss making from that perspective. Right? So there is gonna be a benefit from the NBA coming out of our financials.

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

If you think about how the season plays typically over the quarters, it's important to note that Q2 with the playoffs is by far the biggest chunk both of content cost and revenue generation on the ad sales side, followed by Q1 and then the smallest quarter is Q4. So with that in mind and the fact that we have reinvested some of the savings into other sports rights, we mentioned college football playoffs already, big 12 in the fourth quarter now. What you can expect is roughly 100,000,000 sports cost benefit in the fourth quarter. And then as we turn to 2026, there will be a net benefit of hundreds of millions of dollars from the rights cost coming out some offsetting revenue losses an EBITDA perspective. A very significant improvement. Thanks, John. Let's move on.

Operator

Your next question comes from Richard Greenfield with LightShed Partners. Please go ahead.

Rich Greenfield
General Partner at LightShed Ventures

Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to ask JB, as we look at the streaming landscape, there's been a clear push towards wholesaling to MVPDs. I'm curious, how does the engagement look for those ad supported subs that you're bringing on versus those that sign up for HBO Max directly? And are you thinking about how you market to those subscribers who may not even realize they have Max? Because it seems like there's a a substantial advertising opportunity if you can engage those wholesale subs in the service and certainly in the app.

Rich Greenfield
General Partner at LightShed Ventures

And then just for David, one of your oldest pieces of IP that probably doesn't generate a lot of revenue is gonna be getting a pretty big makeover in a few weeks. I'm curious whether you've seen Wizard of Oz in the sphere, and any thoughts would be great.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

Sure. Let me just start with Wizard of Oz. Jimmy Dolan, in the spirit of the great Chuck Dolan as an entrepreneur, I've been to the sphere many times. I've seen in the smaller sphere, Wizard of Oz, we work together with them. They really get the credit.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

It's a credit to Warner Brothers and the library that we have. We're also looking at our own project around Wizard of Oz that we'll talk about at some point. But it feels really great. It's very exciting. It's very innovative.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

And it premieres at the Sphere on the twenty eighth. So very exciting. JB?

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

Yes. Rich, as it relates to the wholesale partnerships, I guess a couple of thoughts. Number one is when we look at any of those deals, we always look at it as on an LTV basis and sort of a net ARPU basis, when you expect the net natural stack we would use to try and actually acquire those retail subscribers. And so every deal starts with a very healthy LTV profile of a wholesale sub versus what we think we get and what we have to spend to get on a retail basis. So that's kind of the underlying.

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

Then we do work, to your point, increasingly on partnering with with the different MVPDs and non MVPD partners on activation, and we spend more and more time with them, with their customer service teams, with their UX and experience teams on activation of the product. And we have seen great strides and improvements on activation across the board. And frankly, in all of some of our biggest, most recent partnerships, both in The U. S. And outside The U.

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

S, we are trending above what we expected in terms of activation. Obviously, then once we're activated, the engagement is subject to both in app marketing and merchandising as well as continued partnership marketing through the different partners. And then the other thing that we've seen that has been very healthy and also leads to better ARPU is in most all those deals we have upsell capabilities. And so we go from an ad lite product to an ability to actually upsell the customer where we take the majority of the economics on the upsell to an ad free, which also has an ability to drive more ARPU for us, particularly outside The U. S, where ad sales obviously is still a growth business, but it's starting off a lower base.

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

So we have a full attack plan. We have a team actually that we put around the world globally to go after trade marketing and partnerships to try and drive activation and engagement. And we're seeing nice pickup and growth and acceleration of those as we do those deals around the world.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

The only thing I would add is that it's different in different markets. For instance, in The UK, a huge majority of programming outside of sports on Sky that was loved was HBO programming. So there's some markets where people have been watching The Last of Us, Euphoria, White Lotus, House of the Dragon, and it was on a different platform. And now it's gonna move to HBO Max. And so you'd expect in that case, when you have a huge engaged population that has been watching through that group will be spending a lot more time watching.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

We're seeing that in Australia. And then when it's available on a platform as HBO Max, the retail picks up significantly because it's like a marketing vehicle to say, oh, HBO Max is here. And so, you know, JB has been seeing that in Australia, and we're getting very powerful pull through in terms of consumer demand in The UK, Germany and Italy. And we're in a lot of discussions in Italy and Germany as well as we're nonexclusive in The UK. So you'll be seeing those markets as quite powerful coming into next year because it has that unusual dynamic of an embedded audience.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

JB, I don't know if you want to add what a little more to that on Australia, what we're seeing practically.

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

No, that's right. I mean, in Australia, the launch was essentially a dual track launch, where we went obviously retail as well as through our partnership with FoxTel, which was, as David mentioned, our longstanding licensing partner. And so we love that double track of fishing in a pond that's already stocked with our wholesale partners with good economics and at the same time going direct in a smart way to expand the reach of the product. And Australia has been a great success story for us in these early months and way exceeded our expectations. So we're it makes us even more bullish of what we expect to see in the beginning of next year as we launch in these big European markets.

Rich Greenfield
General Partner at LightShed Ventures

Thank you.

Andrew Slabin
Andrew Slabin
EVP - Global Investor Strategy & IR at Warner Bros. Discovery

Great. Thanks, Rick. Let's go to next question please.

Operator

Your next question comes from David Joyce with Seaport Research Partners. Please go ahead.

David Joyce
Senior Equity Analyst - Media Sector at Seaport Research Partners

Thank you. As you went through your upfront advertising negotiations, granted you still have a combined company for the next year, but how are you contemplating addressing marketers' desire to advertise across platforms? Do you have something some structure in place to sell the advertising on streaming and your global networks?

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

Yes. David, that is it's a great point, and that that's one of the areas that we looked at really hard as we contemplated the separation. And we concluded and we've said publicly, we're going to continue to go to the market as business as usual. We will have a structure in place. This is one of the areas where there's significant synergy.

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

When we announced the separation, we made clear that after all that hard work went into generating the synergy, we're going to continue to work as hard to maintain synergy opportunity where it is present. Ad sales is definitely one of those areas. So nothing is going to change from an advertiser perspective, and we're working through the process to set that up internally and with the upfront in general since you mentioned it, we obviously had some concerns going into the year with the macroeconomic and geopolitical environment and fact of the matter is the market has held up very well. We've seen prices up across all categories more so in sports than in general entertainment. On the digital side, there is some price pressure, but we've maintained a very strong price premium for the quality of inventory that we're delivering. So net net, I'm very happy with the outcome.

Andrew Slabin
Andrew Slabin
EVP - Global Investor Strategy & IR at Warner Bros. Discovery

Thanks, David. Next question please.

Operator

Your next question comes from Brian Kraft with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Bryan Kraft
Bryan Kraft
Lead Equity Research Analyst - Media, Telecom, Cable & Video Games at Deutsche Bank

Hi, good morning. J. B, I was wondering if you would comment on where the business is in bringing churn down to what you view as a healthy sustainable level. And also, how you're going about driving that churn down. And then I guess somewhat related, was hoping you could provide an update on where you are on the effort to convert unauthorized account shares into paying customers.

Bryan Kraft
Bryan Kraft
Lead Equity Research Analyst - Media, Telecom, Cable & Video Games at Deutsche Bank

What inning would you say you're in there? And how meaningful do you see that opportunity as you go forward? Thank you.

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

Yes. I'll start with the second, which is on the sort of account sharing, I'd say we're just in the first inning. The reality is we've done we spent a lot of the last several months making sure that our data sets on figuring out who is a legitimate user and

Gunnar Wiedenfels
Gunnar Wiedenfels
CFO at Warner Bros. Discovery

who may not be

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

a legitimate user and making sure that we test it sufficiently so that when we turn on the more aggressive languaging around what needs to happen that we were actually putting the net in the right place, so to speak. And we feel great about where we are. Starting in September, you'll actually start to see the messaging, which right now has been a fairly soft, cancelable messaging, start to get more fixed and such that people will have to take action as opposed to right now sort of having it be a voluntary process. And so the real benefits will start probably in the fourth quarter and then kick in, in 2026 as we tighten the messaging and drive that in a much more aggressive fashion starting in the fourth quarter this year. As it relates to churn, look, we continue to drive churn.

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

I think one of the things in terms of the levers of how we go after it, there's a number of different ways. First thing, obviously, you've heard David and all of us talking about the importance of bundles. We've been very successful, obviously, and you'll see this more over the next few months and and as we prepare to roll out in Europe. Obviously, we've had a very successful relationship with Disney here in The U. S.

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

We're in active conversations with a number of other leading streamers in international markets around bundles. And the profiles of those users see, in some cases, churn cut in half, if not greater, and LTV is double or more. And so bundles is one way we've seen great expansion of LTV and reduction in churn. On engagement, obviously, being the number one thing and the engagement driver that obviously matters most is around content. And as I mentioned earlier, as we look at the content slate and more of the consistency of our content slate, we have had a couple of years where we've had great content, but bigger pockets of time throughout the year with more gaps.

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

We're now getting to a rhythm where between Casey's slate, the theatrical slate, some third party acquisitions, We have a much more consistent fifty two week a year schedule where we're doing a much better job of handing off consumers and subscribers from one set of content to other sets of content. And so we're doing a much more aggressive job on managing the programming and scheduling throughout the year to reduce that. And then there's enormous amount of work still to go on the product itself and the personalization of the product, which, as I've said on previous calls, we went from not good to good, but we still have a ways to go in terms of the feature set. And we're developing and launching small and new features and AD testing a bunch of features every month to try and get the product from good to great. And we know we still have progress there, which is both obviously a challenge, but also an opportunity that will help us drive that engagement.

JB Perrette
JB Perrette
CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games at Warner Bros. Discovery

And so it's a on the overall churn, we feel like we are and we actually saw in the early sort of May the March, April, May, June time frame some really positive improvements on the churn side. But we're not satisfied with where we are and we're continuing to attack it aggressively across product, content, marketing, all the marketing levers that we have.

Andrew Slabin
Andrew Slabin
EVP - Global Investor Strategy & IR at Warner Bros. Discovery

Thank you. Your

Operator

final question comes from Peter Supino with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Peter Supino
MD & Senior Analyst - Media & Entertainment, Cable & Telecom at Wolfe Research, LLC

Good morning, everybody. I wanted to ask you, David, please, about your better together view for DTC. At this point, it seems like it was present as the industry has continued to expand bundling. So could you discuss the contribution to growth ads and maybe to churn of your wholesale or third party strategy and contrast that to your retail strategy and maybe comment on how the partnership with Disney has tracked versus your expectations? Thank you.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

Thanks, Peter. Look, I think one of the things that really drives Better Together is common sense, a more robust slate that appeals to more consumers, but most importantly, the consumer experience. You put the TV set on and or you put on your device and there's 18 apps, and you're you're googling to find out where your show is or where your sport is or where the movie you wanna watch is. And in all the research we do, it's people have adapted to it, but it's a very clumsy consumer experience. And one of the reasons we have fought so hard over the last three years to be a to to be a truly global player, and there's really only, you know, four or five global players right now, truly global players.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

Amazon, Netflix, Disney, YouTube, and us. And YouTube is in a little is in a different business now, but they do have a very powerful global attack. And being global really allows us to take things like Harry Potter to billions of people around the world. And as more and more of these regional players are looking at the cost of building a platform, the engineers, the marketing, and also how differentiated in many cases, we are from them and how much stronger we are together, that it's a much better consumer experience if we're together in Latin America with Klobo. We have local content in Brazil.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

We have local sports, but they have a huge amount of local content and we have tremendous quality with content that's loved down there. And that's true as you go across Europe. And so I think a big piece of this will be cleaning up the consumer experience. We really expect, or I at least expect that we'll look at this business four or five years from now and it won't be 2018. And I think companies that are most successful will be global.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

Maybe there are some regionals that could eke out some profits. And there'll be a lot of those smaller players that want to become part of the global players. And that's what we're seeing, you know, and we're seeing it on an accelerated basis. It may start with bundling, and that's a very effective. We're doing much better with Disney than we thought.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

And I think then, you know, that that it's not just the churn, it's consumer satisfaction, consumer experience. They're going after they have demos that we don't have. We have demos that they don't have. So it's it's it's just better together. Some of it will be a result of consolidation in some markets and some will be white flag.

David Zaslav
David Zaslav
President, CEO & Director at Warner Bros. Discovery

I'm get you know, I don't wanna lose money anymore, and I wanna get back to what you know, a lot of companies wanna get back to what they do, which is just produce content and leave the direct to consumer fight, you know, to that that global fight to others. So Great.

Andrew Slabin
Andrew Slabin
EVP - Global Investor Strategy & IR at Warner Bros. Discovery

Thanks, David. Thanks, Peter. Operator?

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. We thank you so much for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Andrew Slabin
      Andrew Slabin
      EVP - Global Investor Strategy & IR
    • David Zaslav
      David Zaslav
      President, CEO & Director
    • Gunnar Wiedenfels
      Gunnar Wiedenfels
      CFO
    • JB Perrette
      JB Perrette
      CEO & President - Global Streaming and Games
Analysts
    • Robert Fishman
      Senior Research Analyst at Moffettnathanson LLC
    • Jessica Reif Ehrlich
      Managing Director at Bank of America Securities
    • Michael Ng
      MD - Global Investment Research at Goldman Sachs
    • John Hodulik
      Telecom & Cable Analyst at UBS Group
    • Rich Greenfield
      General Partner at LightShed Ventures
    • David Joyce
      Senior Equity Analyst - Media Sector at Seaport Research Partners
    • Bryan Kraft
      Lead Equity Research Analyst - Media, Telecom, Cable & Video Games at Deutsche Bank
    • Peter Supino
      MD & Senior Analyst - Media & Entertainment, Cable & Telecom at Wolfe Research, LLC
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