by Chavi Mehta and Dawn Chmielewski
(Reuters) – U.S. media and entertainment giant Warner Bros. Discovery Inc has revised down its annual profit outlook and announced a net loss of 3.4 billion dollars (3.34 billion euros) in the second quarter.
The action of the group born of the merger between AT & T and Discovery fell 9.5% Friday in pre-market trading.
Warner Bros. Discovery also unveiled a new strategy Thursday when it released its quarterly reports, including announcing plans to merge its online video streaming service HBO Max with Discovery+, as streaming services face slowing demand.
The company will also create a ten-year plan for its DC comics franchise, the source of blockbuster movies like “Wonder Woman” and “Superman.”
Warner Bros. Discovery expects its Adjusted EBITDA to be between $9 billion and $9.5 billion for 2022, down from its pre-merger estimate of $10 billion at $43 billion. It forecasts a profit of $12 billion in 2023.
The company, which released combined results for the first time, reported 92.1 million streaming subscribers at the end of the second quarter.
This figure reflects a gain of approximately 1.7 million subscribers compared to the previous quarter, but also a decrease of approximately 300,000 subscribers in the United States and Canada.
(Report Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles and Chavi Mehta in Bangalore; French version Alizée Degorce)
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