Weekly News Roundup: New Sub Numbers For HBO Max, Peacock, AT&T; Sling TV Raises Pricing

Between all the craziness on Wall Street and the number of earnings in the past few days, it’s been a busy week to say the least. With earnings from NBCU, AT&T, Verizon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Charter, along with news from Sling TV, Peacock, YouTube and others, there’s a lot that’s taken place. I’ve broken down all the earnings, news and concise takeaways at the links below to try and make it easy for everyone to catch up on what they may have missed:

• Vimeo’s Business Detailed In IAC’s S-4 Filing: Revenue from first 9 months of 2020 of $199.4M, with a net loss of $44.8M. Has 1.5M subscribers who pay an average of $214 per year ($17.83 a month). See my blog post for the full details: http://bit.ly/2M8v5E1
• Some clarity on Vimeo’s $300M raise. The report by Reuters that they raised $150M on a $2.75B valuation is NOT accurate. Vimeo did a $200M raise at a $5.2B pre-money valuation and a second raise of $100M at a $5.7B pre-money valuation.
• Comcast Q4 2020 Earnings: Lost 248,000 pay TV subs in the quarter, total loss of 1.4M pay TV subs for the year; 33M “sign ups” for Peacock TV in U.S.; Revenue of $103.6B for the year, a decrease of 14.9% y/o/y. More details: http://bit.ly/3r3eRur
• NBCU says Peacock TV brought in $100M in Q4 revenue and that losses on Peacock TV are estimated to be $2B for 2020/2021. Peacock TV has 33M “sign ups” as of this week. CEO says, “Peacock remains primarily an advertising play”.
• AT&T Q4 2020 Earnings: Ended the year with 41.5M combined HBO Max and HBO U.S. subscribers but didn’t break out how many are just HBO Max subs. Lost 617,000 DirecTV and AT&T TV premium video subscribers (27,000 were the AT&T TV streaming service). More details and a chart that breaks down HBO Max subs more here: http://bit.ly/2YtpLxi
• Verizon Q4 2020 Earnings: Lost 72,000 pay TV subscribers. Total pay TV losses for all of 2020 totaled 298,000 subscribers, which was 7.2% of all pay TV customers. Verizon ended 2020 with 3.8M pay TV subscribers. More details: http://bit.ly/2YrvjZf
• Sling TV raises pricing by $5 a month for new subscribers with their base plan now starting at $35 a month. Sling says they are being “forced to raise prices because the television networks keep charging us more.” Customers now receive 50 hours of free DVR storage, an increase from 10 free storage. More details: http://bit.ly/2M8CZ08
• Apple Q4 2020 Earnings: Total revenue of $111.4B, up 21% y/o/y, Services revenue of $15.7B, up 21% y/o/y,; iPhone revenue of $65.5B, up 17% y/o/y. Revenue from China of $21.3B, up from $13.5B y/o/y. More details: http://bit.ly/3afvRaa
• For those that got free Apple TV+ accounts from buying an Apple product, Apple has extended subscriptions for free until July. They were due to roll over to paid accounts in February.
• Verizon CFO: “As the early cohort of Disney+ customers have come off of the initial free 12-month period, more than two-thirds have maintained their subscription, either through their Verizon direct billing relationship or by opting into one of our newest Mix & Match plans with the Disney bundle included.” More details: http://bit.ly/3orVzgx
• Facebook Q4 2020 Earnings: Total revenue of $28.07B, up 22% y/o/y; Monthly active users of 2.8B, up 12% y/o/y; Daily active users of 1.84B; Warns Apple iOS changes could hurt business. More details: http://bit.ly/3akq9UB
• Charter Q4 2020 Earnings: Lost 66,000 residential pay TV customers; but ended the year up a total of 19,000 residential pay TV customers, totaling 15.6M residential pay TV customers at year’s end. More details: http://bit.ly/3oEJBAB
• YouTube is introducing clipping, the ability to make short clips of live streams or videos with a small group of creators. YouTube blog: http://bit.ly/2YtBwUE

If you have questions on earnings or news, and what the key takeaways are, I’m happy to chat at any time. 917-523-4562 or dan@danrayburn.com