quarterly reports

AT&T, in its Wall Street swan song as an entertainment entity, reported solid subscriber pickup for HBO Max and HBO for the first quarter of 2022 on Thursday. The now-divested WarnerMedia unit was again a drag on profitability because of continued investments in HBO Max and the launch of CNN+ — reflecting a key reason AT&T spun it off.

The company’s customer base fell by 200,000 subscribers during the January-March period, according to its quarterly earnings report released Tuesday It’s the first time that Netflix’s subscribers have fallen since the streaming service became available throughout most of the world outside of China six years ago. The drop this year stemmed in part from Netflix’s decision to withdraw from Russia to protest the war against Ukraine, resulting in a loss of 700,000 subscribers.

The increase to $234 million is powered by a 69% boost from its digital properties, which were aided by its purchase of Cisneros Interactive.

Comscore, which has been losing money since problems cropped up in its financial reports five years ago, turned in positive net income of $29 million for the fourth quarter. Revenue was $96.5 million, up 7%.

The decrease to $775 million is due to political advertising comparison to last year. Compared to 4Q 2019, total company revenue was up 12%. Tegna,

The decrease to $134 million is due to a $50.9 million decrease in political advertising revenue and partially offset by increased local and national advertising demand, Summer Olympics money and higher retrans revenue.

The drop to $351 million is pegged to lower political ad revenue that more than offset an 8% increase in core advertising to $183 million.

However, total core ad revenue (which excludes political) climbed 26% to $359 million from 4Q 2020. Also, retrans money grew 35% to $294 million.

Dish Network, which is in the midst of a years-long shift from satellite pay-TV operator to wireless provider, met Wall Street expectations in the fourth quarter. The company said revenue came in at $4.45 billion in the period ending Dec. 31, down slightly from $4.56 billion in the year-earlier period. Earnings per share totaled 87 cents, down from $1.25 in the 2020 quarter.

Discovery said today it ended the fourth quarter with 22 million DTC subscribers, up from 20 million for 3Q. The bulk of subs are from Discovery+. Revenue rose 10% to $3.2 million, ahead of Wall Street forecasts on higher advertising and distribution. Free cash flow, a key metric, increased 78% to $784 million.

TelevisaUnivision said that Univision narrowed its fourth-quarter loss as revenue increased. The deal combining assets of Televisa and Univision closed earlier this year. The company said Univision lost $2.4 million in the quarter, compared to a $39.1 million loss a year ago. Revenue rose 4.1% to $752 million.

The decrease to $1.5 billion is attributed to the absence of political advertising and a $65 million loss from a ransomware attack in October 2021. Discounting political, core revenue grew 4% to $364 million.

The decrease to $1.25 billion from 4Q 2020 came despite Strong year-over-year growth across all of Nexstar’s non-political revenue sources. Excluding political, net revenue increased 13.8% year-over-year. For the full year, net revenue hit $4.65 billion, a 3.3% increase over the prior year.

AMC Networks beat Wall Street estimates for the fourth quarter and reported 9 million streaming subscribers as of the end of 2021, in line with company projections. Earnings came in at 54 cents a share on an adjusted, diluted basis, down 80% from the same quarter a year ago but comfortably ahead of forecasts. Revenue inched up 3% to $803.7 million.

The biggest news of Tuesday’s call with analysts was a renaming of the company built by the late Sumner Redstone — eliminating his long-used Viacom, while CBS remains for the TV network. But beginning Wednesday, Feb. 16, the parent company will called Paramount. President-CEO Bob Bakish did hail the top shows on CBS as examples of how the company is leading on all platforms. But the focus of the presentation was clearly streaming — primarily Paramount+,

Twitter said on Thursday that its revenue grew more slowly than analysts had expected in the last quarter 2021, and the company predicted that it would report a loss in the current quarter. But it added new users, potentially easing concerns that it was having a hard time drawing interest in an increasingly diverse market for social media.

Disney beat Wall Street expectations for earnings, revenue and streaming subscriber growth in its fiscal first quarter, sending its beleaguered shares up almost 10% in after-hours trading. Flagship streaming service Disney+ reached 129.8 million subscribers, ahead of analysts’ consensus expectation for 125.4 million.

Fox’s revenue rose 9% from the same quarter last year, with cable, broadcast and Tubi all pitching in. Advertising revenue was up 6% to $2.4 billion and affiliate revenues increased 11% to nearly $1.7 billion. Unfortunately, expenses climbed as well. With some key adjustments, excluding the losses from its affiliates, Fox was able to report adjusted earnings per share of 13 cents and adjusted net income of $77 million.

Snap Inc. reported its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2021 and the full year, saying that it exceeded guidance across revenue, daily active users and adjusted EBIDTA, and it posted its first quarter of positive net income ($23 million) and its first full year of positive free cash flow ($223 million).

The company reported a profit of $14.32 billion, or $27.75 per share, for the three-month period ended Dec. 31, 2021. That compared with a profit of $7.22 billion, or $14.09 per share, during the year-ago period. Revenue rose 9% to $137.41 billion, the company’s fifth consecutive quarter of revenue topping $100 billion.

The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company said it earned $10.29 billion, or $3.67 per share, in the final three months of 2021. That’s down 8% from $11.22 billion, or $3.88 per share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue rose to 20% to $33.67 billion. Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $3.85 per share on revenue of $33.36 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.

Sales of products and newer cloud applications saw significant growth. A record contract backlog was driven by more than $140 million in multi-year enterprise deals.

Tokyo-based Sony Corp. recorded a 346 billion yen ($3 billion) profit for the fiscal third quarter, up from 310.7 billion yen the previous year. Quarterly sales edged up to 3 trillion yen ($26 billion) from 2.7 trillion yen.

As usual, Google’s ad business accounted for the bulk of Alphabet’s profits. The Mountain View, Calif., company earned $20.6 billion, or $30.69 per share, well above the average estimated of $27.66 per share among analysts surveyed by FactSet Research. Revenue rose 32% from the previous year to $75.3 billion, eclipsing analysts’ predictions for revenue of $72.3 billion.

The tech giant reported a total of $123.9 billion in revenue, while Wall Street analysts expected the Tim Cook–led company to make $118.3 billion.

Comcast Corp. said this morning that it added fewer broadband customers than in recent quarters, a slowdown that comes after a period of record growth during the height of the coronavirus lockdowns. It reported a 9.6% decline in fourth-quarter net profit to $3.06 billion, or 66 cents a share, from $3.38 billion, or 73 cents a share, a year earlier. The company’s NBCUniversal unit, which is made up of its television, film and theme park businesses, saw revenue rise 25.6% to about $9.34 billion. Peacock hit 24.5 million active accounts, up from 20 million in June.

What should be the final year of AT&T’s WarnerMedia ownership concluded in December. The fourth quarter itself was a strong one, with WarnerMedia drawing $9.9 billion in revenue, which was up 15.4%. Wall Street forecast 4Q earnings per share of 76 cents on $40.43 billion in revenue, according to a consensus compiled by Yahoo Finance. Today, AT&T reported adjusted EPS of 78 cents on $41 billion in revenue.

The Los Gatos, Calif., company added 8.3 million worldwide subscribers during the October-December period, about 200,000 fewer than management had forecast. Besides releasing its fourth quarter results Thursday, Netflix also projected an increase of 2.5 million subscribers during the first three months of this year, well below analysts’ expectations for a gain of 4 million, according to FactSet Research.

Disney on Wednesday reported that its net income was $159 million in the three months through Oct. 2, compared with a loss of $710 million in its fiscal fourth quarter a year ago. Earnings per share came to 9 cents, or 37 cents after one-time items. Revenue climbed 26% to $18.53 billion.

The drop to $331 is pegged to lower political ad revenue, that more than offset an 18% increase in core advertising to $167 million.

The decrease to $126.5 million is due to a $24.1 million decrease in political advertising revenue and partially offset by increased local and national advertising demand, Summer Olympics money and higher retrans revenue.

Spanish-language media giant Univision Communications, which late last year sold a majority stake to an investor group led by former Viacom CFO Wade Davis and then agreed to a merger with Mexican TV giant Televisa, reported a big increase in third quarter advertising revenue. The company said on Thursday that its quarterly revenue rose 20.3% to $754.7 million.

ViacomCBS cracked the $1 billion mark in streaming revenue in the third quarter, but overall results were more mixed, with total revenue rising 13% to $6.6 billion and earnings per share declining to 69 cents. Advertising inched up 1%. Cable network ad revenue gained 6%. Free, ad-supported streaming outlet Pluto TV continued to be a mainstay, with revenue up 99% and monthly active users rising to 54 million, paced by global expansion.

The increase to $756 million is driven by record third quarter subscription revenue and advertising and marketing services revenue.

The company finished the quarter with 10.98 million pay TV subscribers, down from 10.99 million at the end of the second quarter.  It had 8.42 million Dish TV subs, down from 8.55 million, but it grew its streaming Sling TV subscribers to 2.56 million, up  from 2.44 million.

However, total core ad revenue (which excludes political) climbed 23% to $292 million, increasing by $55 million, from 3Q 2020. Also, retrans money climbed 49% to $266 million.