Sentiment Analysis of the earnings transcript to help figure out if there are any bullish or bearish sentiments that could be gathered from it. We're doing ML and AI based analysis on the earnings call to get some more insights.
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| Statement |
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| Longer term, look, I continue to be very bullish on -- as the industry continues to rationalize, fewer players, a more rational content spending, more rational pricing and fewer players doing, what I'd call, irrational deals, both on the retail and the wholesale side that -- the profile of this business can be extremely healthy and, over time, even north of the 20% range |
| But we found it to be, so far, very successful building awareness and growing month-to-month, and we're about to launch, arguably, our biggest content in that sector with March Madness coming to Max later in this month |
| And as we think of the other key component we laid out that August, which was trying to get to $1 billion of EBITDA from the $2 billion loss in '22 to $1 billion of EBITDA in '25, we're confident that we're on a -- we're actually ahead of the plan on the profitability and that the growth is going to come here over the next year or 2 years as we launch in more markets with a better product with, frankly, the best content lineup we've ever had, and launching new SKUs and new product experiences like an ad-supported SKU in more markets internationally |
| And certainly, on the WBD side, for all the reasons we just talked through, we have a number of different vectors that are not theories, but our practice and that we're executing on that will help us deliver that growth |
| And so I think we feel very good about that on the profitability side and the $1 billion |
| So I'd say, generally, on the trajectory, we feel very good about it |
| And over time, we remain very bullish |
| And we think there's -- for all the efficiencies that we've driven, we continue to see more benefits to drive materially healthier both cash and cash conversion that Gunnar has talked about |
| And so we're very optimistic about what can happen |
| And the longer-term potentials of the margins in that business, we think, are exciting |
| And we're within the Studio segment, doubling down on games as an area where we think there's a lot more growth opportunity that we can tap into with the IP that we have and some of the capabilities on the Studio side, where we're uniquely positioned as both a publisher and a developer of games |
| We've made lots of improvements from where we were, but we still have a lot of ad format enhancements, which ultimately will give us more things that we can go to marketers with shoppable ads, other elements of the ad format side of the house that we can improve, which should give us more opportunities for growth as well |
| And ultimately, as the mix continues to change of wholesale to retail, there's an ARPU benefit -- an arbitrage that is happening as we may lose some further wholesale subs |
| And sure enough, we've seen a material -- just in the last 7 days since we launched, a material improvement in the percentage of people taking annual subscriptions, thanks to the installment payment plan |
| The product enhancement on Max is materially better |
| And so those are markets where we are very confident |
| and Australia, our content travels extremely well |
| I'm impressed you can remember 6 to 7 vectors, that's better than I can do |
| It makes the year look amazing |
| Wonka at the end of the year was fantastic |
| And David and Gunnar and the whole team have done an incredible job of driving down a culture of what's in the best interest of the WBD company and the shareholder as the new kind of mantra for the entire team and organization |
| But the opportunity is to take those 4 franchises and be able to develop a much more holistic approach, particularly around expanding into the mobile and multi-platform free-to-play space, which could give us a much better and more consistent set of revenue |
| One is, obviously, we've done, I think, an incredible job in the first 18 months paying down the debt that we did take on to the other transaction, now under $40 billion of debt, under 4x levered |
| And we've got a great lineup of additional content |
| And so both of those metrics, we continue to think, will be very healthy as we go into '24 and beyond |
| But we have a road map that continuously improves the product and the surfacing and the discovery, which will help us with engagement and should help us reduce churn |
| We're going to be doing that starting later this year and into '25, which is another growth opportunity for us |
| And having 11 owned studios, where we're not obviously just a publisher of games, but we're actually a developer of games, we think it's a differentiated asset for us |
| And so our lineup gets stronger as we get through the next few months |
| I mean we -- look, we think it's a meaningful differentiator for us |
| Statement |
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| And then when you don't have a release or, unfortunately, we also have disappointments as we just released Suicide Squad this quarter, which was not as strong |
| And yet, I think the market is still concerned that there's not a lot of profit potential there |
| And number two, which is less of an issue today than it was a year ago and will be less of an issue, but it's still an issue is, obviously, the legacy HBO business still has a legacy wholesale, linear wholesale business, which has been similar to the pay-TV ecosystem, losing subscribers |
| Saved 5 minutes per game, so I feel bad for the games group |
| The challenge we've had is our business, historically, there has been very AAA console-based |
| Luckily, that's been abating, but that is a bit of a headwind that we face |
| Remembering that the wholesale partnerships in a region like LatAm, where credit card penetration and billing is a major challenge, are -- it's super helpful to have those partnerships |
| We had a much lighter slate in the second half of the year than we ever expected |
| Look, we never expected to hit profitability this fast |
| We're not surprised that we lost some subscribers in the U.S |
| We fundamentally disagree |
| And when we think in 12 months, we went from -- you're right, an extreme of having dropped almost $5 billion between that profitability profile and where we were in '22, $5 billion, which is crazy |
| And while on the different segments of our business, HBO and on the Max side, frankly, we've never been better |
| But it's a problem in LatAm when you ask people to pay $80 in one go or $100 in one go for an annual subscription |
| And then our original slate, partly because of the strike, we pushed out some titles that were supposed to be in the fourth quarter because we couldn't get the talent to help promote it |
| Otherwise, I think you'd be accusing me of some punditry |
| And one specific example is, again, because billing and payments is an issue in Latin America and other markets in the world, where people are more price-sensitive, we obviously are trying to get churn down as we go |
| So in the back half of last year, our pay-1 movies were significantly less volume |
| And in the 8 months following, for a variety of reasons, some that we knew about, some that are related to the strike, we went into the -- probably the lightest content slate we've ever had |
| We are very light in terms of our ad load |
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