(AOF) – Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), whose title lost 2.14% in off-hours trading, reported a net loss of $ 2.1 billion in the fourth quarter, after a deficit of 2, $3 billion in the third quarter. This reflects ongoing charges related to the restructuring of the merged media companies. The group unveiled an adjusted EBITDA of $2.6 billion for the period, in line with the consensus. Its turnover stood at 11 billion dollars, against 11.2 billion consensus.
The media company posted a loss of 0.86 cents per share for the December quarter, compared to earnings per share of 0.08 cents a year earlier, which is worse than the consensus polled by Capital IQ of a loss of 0.45 cents per share.
Total costs and expenses increased to $12.9 billion from $2.68 billion year-on-year.
“In an increasingly challenging environment, we were able to generate over $3.3 billion of reported free cash flow in 2022, a healthy conversion, despite significant merger and integration expenses” , said general manager David Zaslav.
WBD is targeting $3.5 billion in synergies and cost savings over the next two years, including $750 million in 2022 and $2 billion in 2023.
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Sector analysis Communication and Media
French players well positioned in audiovisual production
Among the independent players, the Frenchman Banijay is the world leader with an expected turnover of 3 billion euros in 2022 in a market which represents 100 billion in revenue. Mediawan (backed by the KKR fund), whose turnover amounts to 1 billion euros, is the other main French player in the sector. The market is still very fragmented because according to the European Audiovisual Observatory, the top twenty production groups were responsible for only 38% of titles created in 2020. However, experts believe that the sector has entered a phase consolidation. Thus Banijay’s stock market listing aims to enable it to better participate in this movement.