Welcome to the latest installment of Dan Rayburn's Streaming Insights & Intelligence, a weekly insights column on StreamTV Insider where the industry analyst puts facts and figures to the news you need to know about. Join the discussion on LinkedIn and check back each week as he unpacks key industry happenings.
Here’s what Rayburn’s tracking for the week of May 8, 2024: Earnings, earnings, earnings – Disney, Fubo, Vimeo, Fastly, Amazon; Netskrt raises funds while Crunchyroll raises prices.
Disney earnings
Disney Calendar Q1 2024 Earnings (FY Q2): The DTC streaming business of Disney+ and Hulu had an operating income profit of $47M, while ESPN+ lost $65 million. They added 6.3M Disney+ Core subs (117.6M total), excluding Disney+ Hotstar, which lost 2.3M subs. Hulu SVOD gained 700,000 subs (45.8M total), and Hulu + Live TV lost 100,000 subs (4.5M total). ESPN+ lost 400,000 subs (24.8M total).
Disney will add an ESPN Plus tile to Disney+ this fall, giving subscribers access to "select live games and studio programming" within the Disney+ app. Disney will begin cracking down on password sharing in some markets in June, followed by a broad rollout in September. Excluding ESPN, linear TV operating income slumped 22% to $752 million. Linear network revenue across Disney’s portfolio, excluding ESPN, fell 8%.
Fubo earnings
Fubo Q1 2024 Earnings: Added 226,000 subscribers in the US, up 18% YoY, ending the quarter with 1.5 million US subscribers.
Domestic revenue was $394 million, up 24% YoY, with ARPU up 10% to $84.54. Fubo added 18,000 subscribers in “rest of world” ending the quarter with 397,000 subscribers. Consolidated net loss for the quarter was $56.6 million, down from a net loss of $83.4 million YoY. Achieved a $10 million improvement in Free Cash Flow and ended the quarter with $175 million in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash.
Fubo believes it has "sufficient liquidity to fund our current operating plan as we progress towards our stated profitability goals in 2025." The company ended the quarter with 165 free FAST channels on its platform. Full-year subscriber guidance is 1,675 million to 1.695 million subscribers, representing 4% year-over-year growth at the midpoint.
Regarding Fubo's filed lawsuit against Disney, FOX and WBD, Fubo said the court has made a recent decision to grant limited discovery and set an August 7, 2024 hearing date for its preliminary injunction motion, as well as the Court’s indication that it intends to render a decision before the launch date of the JV.
Vimeo earnings
Vimeo Q1 Earnings: Revenue of $105 million, flat from Q4 revenue of $106 million and up 1% YoY. Net income in the quarter of $6 million.
Expects Q2 revenue to be slightly below $100 million (down ~3% YoY). "Enterprise" customers (which Vimeo calls "Subscribers") had a monthly ARPU of $1,766, up $20 from Q4.
Is keeping previous 2024 revenue guidance of $385-$400 million, with an operating loss of approximately $3 million. At the low and high range of the guidance, total revenue would be down 8% to 4% year-over-year. Q1 headcount ended at 1,024, down 8% YoY, with a significant majority of the reduction coming from sales and marketing. Vimeo ended Q1 with $304 million in cash and cash equivalents.
Fastly earnings
Fastly Q1 2024 Earnings: Stock was down 27% after hours on earnings day.
Revenue of $133.5M, down from $137.7M in Q4. Net loss of $43.4M. The company expects revenue to decline in Q2, with revenue guidance of $130M. Fastly also lowered full year revenue guidance from their previous $580-$590M, to $555M.
Q1 revenue breakdown: Network Services revenue was $106M, and security revenue was $24.6 million. Fastly ended Q1 with $150.8 million in cash and cash equivalents and $178.6 million in marketable securities. Fastly is still interviewing for a new CRO.
Amazon earnings
Amazon Q1 2024 Earnings: AWS revenue of $25 billion, up 17% y/o/y; AWS's growth rate puts it on a $100 billion annual revenue run rate. Advertising revenue was $11.8 billion, up 24% YoY.
Amazon expects overall capex to meaningfully increase this year, driven by higher infrastructure costs to support growth in AWS, including generative AI. Capex in Q1 was $14 billion. Amazon's CEO said AI will drive "tens of billions of dollars" of revenue in the next several years.
Netskrt raises funds
Canada-based Netskrt has raised about $7.2 million ($10 million CAD) in its series A round.
Netskrt focuses on delivering video to remote and rural communities and for specific video applications with hard-to-reach subscribers across rail operators and airlines. The company has been deploying caches into transportation environments and says it also sees a need to create a CDN footprint to help smaller ISPs manage live event traffic.
ISPs serving remote, rural, exurban, or underserved urban areas are often too far away from the video source or CDN nodes for their customers to realize the benefits of the CDN, which is where Netskrt comes in.
The company has a total of 3.5Tbps deployed across 50 ISPs in 31 states, with plans to add another 15 Tbps to its US footprint and expand the footprint to include Brazil, the UK and Italy.
Crunchyroll raises prices
Crunchyroll is increasing the pricing on their Mega Fan and Ultimate Fan subscription tiers in select countries by $2 a month.
The Mega Fan tier will increase to $11.99 monthly, and the Ultimate Fan tier will increase to $15.99 monthly. The existing Fan tier will have no price increase and will remain priced at $7.99 monthly. This is the first price increase for Crunchyroll since 2019, and the change will impact pricing in Argentina, Colombia, France, Portugal, the United States and select additional countries.
Dan Rayburn is an analyst in the streaming media industry, with regular TV appearances on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and Schwab Network amongst others. He is conference Chairman for the NAB Show Streaming Summit in Las Vegas each year, and his streamingmediablog.com website is one of the most widely read sites for broadcasters, content owners, OTT providers, Wall Street money managers, and industry executives. He also has a podcast at danrayburnpodcast.com. He can be reached at [email protected]
Dan Rayburn’s Streaming Analysis & Insights is an opinion column. It does not necessarily represent the opinions of StreamTV Insider.