Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Q2 2026 earnings call transcript

I would like to hand the conference up with the Mr. Peter Lee, Senior Vice President and Professor Alicia, you may begin.

Good morning and thank you for joining us for our 2 to 2026 earnings call. Joining me today from Warner Brothers Discoveries Management is David Zazlop, President and Chief Executive Officer. Guner Wiedenfelds, our Chief Financial Officer and JB Parett, CEO and President Global Streaming and Games. This morning, we issued our earnings release, shareholder letter and trending schedule. And these materials can be found on our website at IR. WBD. com.

Today's presentation will include forward looking statements that we may pursue into the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward looking statements include, without limitations, statements about the benefits of the proposed transaction between Warner Brothers Discovery and Paramount's Guidance, future financial and operating results, the combined company's plans, objectives, expectations and intentions and other statements that are not historical facts.

Such statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of WBD's management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties outside of our control that could cause actual results that differ materially from our current expectations. 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, Unformed 10K and its reports, Unformed 10Q and Form 8K.

WBD is not under any obligation and expressly disclaims any obligation to update, alter or otherwise revise any forward looking statements, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by applicable law. In addition, we will discuss non-gap financial measures on this call.

Reconciliation of these non-gap financial measures to the closest gap financial measure can be found in our earnings release and in our trending schedule, which can be found in the investor relations section of our website.

I will turn the call over to David for some brief remarks after which we will take your questions. Before doing so, I ask that you limit your questions to topics related to our key two results and related business and financial topics. As noted in our shareholder letter, management will not be taking questions regarding the proposed paramount guidance transaction.

And with that, I'll turn it over to David.

Good morning, everyone. From the beginning, we've said that our plan and strategy is to build the world's leading storytelling company. One that attracts and retains the best creative talent, reaches global audiences, and ultimately creates shareholder value. For all that's changing and how people consume entertainment, we have held firm to our conviction that there is no substitute for creative excellence and quality storytelling, and it's driving strong results.

Nowhere is it more evident than our streaming business, where the breadth, artistry, and cultural influence of HBO programming across the globe is translating into great financial progress for HBO Max as a streaming offering. In Q2, our streaming segment delivered more than $3 billion in revenues. For the first time ever, a subscriber-related revenue growth accelerated 200 basis points sequentially to 10% XFX with positive engagement and subscriber trends.

And just as important, streaming generated $512 million in adjusted EBITDA, a more than 60% EBITDA improvement over the same period in 2025, and a nearly 17% adjusted EBITDA margin. This altogether represents a powerful and impressive business turnaround from a predominantly US-only HBO streaming business losing 2 billion plus in 2022 to a global high growth asset where HBO is globally recognized as the highest quality streaming service in the world.

HBO series are finding a bigger global audience more consistently than ever before. So far in 2026, the pit, a night of the seven kingdoms, house of the dragon, and euphoria have each averaged at least 25 million global viewers per episode, with several programs exceeding 30 million average viewers. And with the new season of Gilded Age and the debuts of Lanterns and Harry Potter coming soon, as well as our strong content pipeline in 2027, we expect that momentum to continue.

This year's Emmy Awards also attest to our commitment to storytelling excellence with WBD leading the industry with 150 nominations.

HBO Max alone led the industry and garnered 122 Emmy nominations, spanning 21 individual programs, including 26 the season two of the pit, and 25 for the final season of hacks. And Warner Brothers Television again showed that it is among the world's best television producers with 52 Emmy nominations, including 28 for programs that we produce the third party platforms, like shrinking and avid elementary.

Our quality programming is also fueling our global networks resilience, as they contend with continued headwinds. In Q2, our roster of premium sports properties showed its value as we saw the highest rated national championship basketball game ever on TNT sports, a more than 20 percent increase in viewership for the MLB regular season thus far, and a 50 percent increase in viewership increase for the NHL playoffs.

In a turbulent geopolitical moment, the quality, trustworthiness, and reliability of CNN's journalism again proved itself. In Q2, CNN linear viewership increased 24 percent over the previous year, and minutes spent across all CNN platforms increased 19 percent. And our network brands were home to four of the top 10 shows in general entertainment across all cable networks during the second quarter.

Just recently, Discovery Shark Week saw its highest year over year growth in more than a decade, with Discovery ranked as the number one cable network in prime time among people aged 25 to 54 across Shark Week's first three nights.

There's no question that media is by nature a business full of hits and misses, and you see that reflected in our studio's results.

While a handful of recent films have underperformed expectations, importantly, we spent years transforming and diversifying our studio segment to better manage risk and volatility. The breadth of this business today across theatrical television, licensing, games, experiences, retail, and consumer products has greatly improved its resilience and ability to generate consistent shareholder value. We are excited by what's in the pipeline from our remaining 2026 and 2027 film slate to Ted Lassov, the opportunities generated by Harry Potter.

Over the long term, we continue to respect this segment to deliver our goal of generating over three billion in adjusted EBITDA.

Taken together, our results this quarter show how much we've readied each segment of our business for the future. We've succeeded in making HBO Max a highly valuable global streaming service and are seeing strong financial returns now after years of heavy investment. We've optimized our global networks and continue to invest in general entertainment, sports, and news that serve tens of millions of global viewers.

And over the last year, we've shown our studios remain the industry's creative leader, while simultaneously transforming its operating model and financial profile. As stated in our shareholder letter, we remain confident that our agreed upon sale to Paramount Skydance will be completed. We are excited for what's ahead in the remainder of 2026 and beyond. And with that, we welcome your questions.

Thank you. David, can you speak a little more to the scripted show, Pipeline? You've got upcoming on HBO. I think you recently finished some big series, including Hacks and Euphoria. Maybe the White Lotus and the Knight of the Seven Kingdoms fall into there, but will there be fewer returning shows in 2027? And are there any big IP shows that we should be aware of now that you've expanded into more territories globally to drive the growth in the segment?

And then on the studio, I know you had a remarkable year last year. You talked about how it's a lumpy business, understandably a little lighter this year. As we just think about a path to getting back to $3 billion and even though I'm struggling a little bit to get there, you weren't quite there in 2025 and kind of everything went well. So help us understand how you can get back to that $3 billion in EBITDA level with the studio longer term. Thanks.

Thanks so much, Stephen. Let me just start with HBO. Casey Bloys and Amy and Franny. The whole team over there have done a remarkable job. We in 2022 HBO was basically producing almost all of its content, but they weren't using Warner Brothers. We've teamed them up together and we've invested significantly in driving the overall quality of the content.

And Casey has and his team now have the strongest HBO we've ever had. Together with all of the 10 poll shows, we also have local content around the world. We have lanterns coming up, white lotus is coming back, Gilded Age is coming soon. And we greenlit Harry Potter for the next 10 consecutive years. I've already seen the first three episodes.

It's very strong. We'll be debuting that on Christmas Day. We we have a very strong HBO. And we're seeing it in the engagement. We're seeing it in the overall growth. And we're seeing it in how people see HBO as a quality service that they can rely on with their family.

Before we get to the free cash flow, JB, we've seen so we've seen a lot of real growth across Europe. Just talk about what we're seeing with Max because it's not only is it terrific turnaround. It's a high growth business now and next quarter will even be stronger.

Yeah, and Steven on the content side, just to echo what David said, we actually have 2027 is arguably our best year yet. We obviously have white lotus coming back. We got nine of the seven kingdoms, which is obviously a breakthrough series that came out this year that didn't exist 12 months ago. And the case in the team came up with to be able to be repeatable on a frequent basis. He got picked coming back, got the last of us coming back.

So we feel actually even better about 27 than we already did about 26. So we feel very strongly about that. Our original content.

Efforts around the world, as David said, we're starting to see real traction with more and more shows from the international markets, particularly as Casey and his team have continued to get closer to the development in those markets. And so we're excited about the local content coming out of the international markets and we're starting to see it because not only did you see, obviously, I was returned double digit distribution growth this quarter, but we still were laughing for part of the quarter. This related party deal that we disclosed in a while back. And if you looked at it, excluding that related party deal, our distribution growth would actually have been in the low teens.

And that trajectory looks very solid for the remainder of the year. And so a return to not only double digit, but sort of teams level growth on distribution is a testament to both distribution and subscriber growth led, as well as monetization on ad sales engagement and all the other levers that we're continuing to push.

All right. Thanks, Jimmy.

And Steve, this is going up for the for the studio. Look, I have zero doubts about our long term $3 billion. EBITDA target for the studio. And what's important here, you know, let me go through a couple of points. Number one, the quarter, you know, obviously, you know, in the film business wasn't what we expected. At the same time, you already mentioned this.

Q two of 2025 was an outstanding quarter. We had massive content licensing deals, one very big one internal, and then we had centers and and Minecraft. So, you know, it was a tough calm, but nonetheless, you know, against that year, the film business is going to have a harder time this year, no doubt. What matters here is we have invested significant amounts of money, time, management, intention into diversifying and transforming the studio so that we're in a position to be able to digest a quarter like this.

And these investments are going to pay off. If we go through business by business, you know, we've always said that we're really looking forward to 2027 for the film business. The lineup is fantastic. Yeah, it's a richer scale and more promising tentpole IP in there relative to 2026. So that's really something to look forward to in our plan longer term assumes a larger number of films than than what we than what we're seeing this year. One of others TV, as David said a minute ago is performing really well more than 80 shows on air across every platform with all of the key buyers. And one thing that's going to help us going forward. If you take a step back, we're going to start benefiting from S Bob shows coming back to replenish our library.

We've gone through a bit of an adjustment. If you look at a decade worth of this business going from preliminary predominantly broadcast focus production to more and more spot production with longer windows and a larger upfront margin and fee. That's going to come back and start start replenishing and driving library and associated licensing and downstream revenues going forward. So there's a really positive outlook there for that business. I mentioned the investments that we have made in sort of the ancillary areas like consumer products retail or or tours business. Those are things that were underdeveloped in one of our brothers and we have spent years, you know, deploying the capital and and setting the company up for for great returns was a very predictable, high margin, high, highly cash generous returns.

And we're approaching this in a much more integrated way now where these things are not an act of thought, but, you know, part of the planning from the from the outset with with every new story that we're that we're developing. And then, and then finally games where where JB and the team have, you know, restructured the portfolio Lego Batman launching this year, very encouraging as sort of, you know, first installment in that, in that new strategy. And here we see growth opportunities down the line as well. And the biggest individual title to look forward to obviously here is the second installment of of Hogwarts legacy. So you're taking all these together. You know, we have a we have a detailed plan for the next three to five years with with a lot to look forward to.

Thank you. Rich, just first and foremost, we're confident this transaction will close and we've been trying to drive the value of the company to deliver to P. Sky and to David the best company possible the company is performing at a very high level and we have every expectation that the transaction will close and that the company will be performing even better than the plan that we presented to P. Sky when we did our deal.

And look, the rich to your question on the studios were making 14 films this year ramping that to 19 next year and we're we're very confident that we're going to be able to maintain that larger number. We have the unique benefit of a great creative team, great relationships in the talent communities and an enormous amount of IP. So, you know, the way Mike and Pam and Peter and James are running this strategically is to find the right mix between, you know, original films leveraging our IP to make, you know, the right number of 10 poll IP driven films were ramping up the animation output. We've got a great label with new line. So, you know, this is, this allows us to put together a really nicely balanced slate, which I think from a financial perspective is going to help us manage risk, the inevitable risk in this business pretty well also.

So, you know, I'm really looking forward to these these upcoming years. You know, one of the issues that we see this year and we really were striving to have both original content and big 10 polls and and mid sized 10 polls for this year.

You know, next year we're going to have Lord of the Rings Batman Superman Minecraft to it's just because of the overall philosophy of making sure that the we we bring the motion pictured to the market when the film is ready. We're a little light on those 10 polls. We do have cat and the hat coming. We got practical magic.

And we think the back end of the year is going to be good for us, but when you compare that with with what we have coming next year and the amount of 10 polls. If we had to do it, we would have kind of spread those a little bit more over this year and next year. And so I think, you know, you'll see, you'll see next year and in the years ahead that we're really taking advantage of the big 10 polls and the great IP that that Warner Brothers has to balance out the original content as we develop more bigger movies from scratch.

Sure. Hey, Sean. So let me start with the licensing side quickly. We're seeing very healthy, very healthy demand. This goes back to the enormous value of our library. I mean, we're getting healthy demand, even for shows that are a decade old and it's a healthy marketplace right now. And as you said, the margins are great. You could almost look at the studio's business as a, you know, library driven content licensing business, which we replenish with new creative every year. That's certainly the way from a financial perspective, how it works. And that business is in very, very good shape right now. And I see no reason why that should change. As we said before, we have shifted a little bit and we're utilizing a lot more of that content internally now, which obviously, you know, it doesn't drive the immediate profits that an external sale would generate.

But, you know, you can see in this quarter, you know, how the, the consolidated profits are benefiting from some of those licensing deals that we've done over the year. As we're, as we're utilizing content on JB's business and to some extent on, on, on our linear networks that were that we have self created and that way internalized at the margins.

You know, for linear advertising, you know, you mentioned the biggest adjustment factor here with the NBA. That's been, that's been obviously a negative driver on ad revenues, a positive driver on profits in the second quarter as much as or more. So, even then in the first quarter on an underlying basis, if we take it a market by market here in the US trends are pretty consistent with what we've seen in the first quarter, or, or, you know, into the end of last year.

We're, as David said earlier, we're very pleased with how our viewership is developing. We're, we're up in general entertainment and very significantly up in news and sports. And on the advertising side, we kind of, you know, held a similar rate as, as early in the year. And so, you know, from that perspective, no, no trend change here. The picture is slightly different internationally where Q two was worse than Q one and across all of our markets, we are seeing indications of just, you know, just some caution consumer weakness in the, in the understandably. Difficult geopolitical environment. Again, the trends are, are slightly different from, from market to market, but, you know, Q two, a little weaker than, than Q one.

And what we're seeing so far into Q three in terms of July and, and August is also a mixed picture some, some markets looking better. Others continue to look, you know, similar to, to the second quarter. So visibility is, is not great looking out into the, into the rest of the year and we'll see.

And Yuri mentioned in the World Cup, you know, obviously everywhere in the world, especially with the broader field this year has had an impact on, on, on everybody who's not could have been, you know, benefiting from, from, from that worship. They're one of the things that we're seeing and it varies by market, but the benefit of, of the work that Casey and JB and the team have gone in driving HBO Max globally, where, you know, as you look at a number of countries.

We're out running the decline by, by the significant growth that we're seeing at HBO Max, that's not true for all markets, but we're seeing it meaningfully in a number of markets, which is encouraging. And to continue growth of HBO Max becoming a, you know, a critical element of, of us as a growth engine. And, you know, countering the technical decline that we're seeing.

Thanks, Jessica. The overall culture of this company and the work ethic of the company has been inspiring. It's, you know, it has been challenging, you know, to our focus has been, how do we drive a stronger company, meet and exceed our business plan and deliver a stronger and stronger and higher growth company to keep Skye and David so that Paramount coming together with Warner Brothers is even stronger.

But, you know, it's, it's, it's, I thought it was going to be quite challenging. But, you know, when you look at the way this company is performing and you look at the close to 40,000 people coming in every day, I went all across Europe in the last six weeks and met and was in most of those countries meeting with people.

They're working extremely hard. And the focus has been that this is a great company and that how do we take advantage of every day we're here and and try and focus on best performance possible. But also this idea of what stories will we tell and the drive to continue to tell great stories at HBO at Warner Brothers on the motion picture side at each of our cable channels around the world on our free to air and cable channels everywhere.

I'm quite inspired by the by the culture here and the the drive to continue to put points on the board and and take pride in the fact that this is a great company. We want to deliver a great company and I think it's, I do think it's unusual when you look at the overall performance of the company and how hard people are working and so we're lucky. And I think that we have an unusual and set of employees that really love these, these assets and as long as we're here, we're going to be working hard every day to continue to honor Warner and HBO and and discovery and all the great, the great assets. On the DC side, James is, is focused on man of tomorrow.

I saw some pictures yesterday that looked amazing. Actually yesterday was James birthday and he's out working. He's he's working 16, 18 hours a day. It looks fantastic. We're super excited about it. Matt Reeves. I spoke to over the weekend and he's working very hard on Batman and we have clay face coming up soon, which looks terrific. We got lanterns launching in the next few weeks on HBO, which, which Casey and Sarah are super excited about and and so the DC feels very good.

And we have a robust pipeline and Peter and James are hard at work.

JB, you want to talk about the bundles and how those working around the world as well as with with Disney here in the US. Yeah, Jessica, we know we've been big, big believers David has been a big champion of bundles and the power that they can have for consumers, particularly at a time where obviously pricing continues to increase across the individual services. And we continue to see both benefits on subscriber acquisition, as well as obviously retention and meaningful improvements in turn with those bundles and at the combination of distributor bundles like Verizon in the US. We're both bundles Netflix and us or Mercado Libre and Clara Latin America or can out loose or sky here in Europe, as well as programmer bundles, which Disney obviously in the US has been our longest and most successful to date.

RTL plus in Germany when we launched early this year, which has the best of local and the best of global coming together. We'll be announcing more another bundle coming later in this fall in Europe. We have view of you bundle in Southeast Asia. And so we continue to be big believers in it. We see the proof is in the data in both as they say acquisition and meaningfully better churn. And the good news is that along with all the other components that go into engagement and retention content, the product, our marketing and so on, we are looking at a 2026 year where the trends give us sort of high confidence that we're going to have our best year ever in terms of retention and lower churn in 2026.

And so that trend is also helping and we see that trend continuing, particularly as we talked about earlier, as the strength of our content lineup and the consistency of it throughout the year makes us feel even more bullish for 2027.