Lionsgate Grows Global Subscriber Base

The number of subscribers to Lionsgate’s premium pay and streaming brands grew to 28.9 million year-on-year in the first quarter.

OTT subs were up 58 percent to 16.7 million, with STARZPLAY International subscribers up 106 percent year-over-year to 7 million, the independent studio said in releasing its first-quarter financials.

Revenues were up to $901.2 million, with the studio reporting a net loss of $45.4 million in the quarter, as compared with a year-ago profit of $51.1 million.

“I’m pleased to report that we were able to lean into our resilient business model to drive strong financial results in the quarter,” said Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer. “We filled our content pipelines with exciting new properties and added valuable new titles to our library. Like the rest of the industry, Starz’s subscriber growth was impacted by the decline in at-home viewership and, importantly, a light content quarter due to Covid-driven production delays. However, the strong opening of Power Book III: Raising Kanan two weeks after the quarter ended sparked a return to strong global subscriber growth which we expect to continue for the rest of the year.”

Media networks revenues were up 4 percent to $382.3 million, with segment profit up 23 percent to $88.2 million. Motion picture revenues also rose by 4 percent to $291.2 million, while segment profit declined to $44.3 million. Television production revenue almost doubled to $386.1 million, delivering a segment profit of $3 million.