Roku sees sub growth of 1.9M accounts, hours flat.
Roku recently reported Q2 earnings and saw growth of 1.9M active accounts (up from 1.6M in Q1), while viewing hours were flat vs Q1 at 25.1B. Total accounts are up 17% to 73.5M globally. Daily viewing on Roku netted 3.8 hours per day per active account. Operating losses were up slightly, while revenue was up about 10%. Among FAST providers, Roku is now ahead of Tubi (64M users), but behind Pluto TV (80M), while Amazon’s Freevee numbers are not reported. Q3 looks to continue to invest primarily into licensed content, but originals are in development, as well as live sports and continued local coverage in select markets.
The Circana Take:
- FAST is here to stay and Roku is a top tier player. Their multi-pronged approach across hardware and software offers more opportunities to attract users.
- As with other platforms, Roku is experiencing the challenge of a lighter ad market at a time where viewership is stabilizing.
WBD’s combined Max service sees slight sub loss.
Warner Bros. Discovery reported its first earnings since launching Max, a rebrand of HBO Max combined with content from Discovery+ (which still exists as a profitable standalone service). Total subscribers are now 95.8 million, down from 97.6 million last quarter, positioning the combined services behind Netflix (238.4M) and Disney (220M). Domestically, subs fell to 54 million from 55.3 in Q1. Sub losses were attributed to the consolidation of services into Max. ARPU was up 2.5% domestically. Losses from streaming were practically eliminated, down to $3 million from 2022’s $558M. Of note, WBD CEO David Zaslav said that both news and live sports would be coming to Max, taking advantage of their ownership of CNN as well as sports rights ranging from MLB, NBA, NHL to March Madness and All-Elite wrestling.
The Circana Take:
- News and live sports on a streaming platform will be major market differentiators whose effectiveness will come down to pricing and content quality.