Comcast, home to NBCUniversal, will report on July 27 followed by Warner Bros. With the Writers Guild strike kicking off on May 2 and SAG-AFTRA joining the fray on July 13, Netflix is the first Hollywood studio to disclose earnings figures amid the actors’ work stoppage. But if there are opportunities that give us access to pools of IP that we can develop into and against that could be super interesting.” “I think we have traditionally been very strong builders over buyers and that really hasn’t fundamentally changed. “Our M&A activity would be mostly around IP that we can develop into great content for our members, which is our real strength in business,” the co-CEO said. On the earnings update, Sarandos was asked how the company would strategically deploy that cash. In its second quarter, the streaming giant gained 5.9 million subscribers as it built a total global paid membership base of 238.39 million, far outpacing its rivals like Disney+ (157.8 million subscribers) or Max/Discovery+ (97.6 million). Netflix had been expected to spend around $17 billion on programming content this year. “The sorry news for writers is that, in declaring a strike, they may in fact be helping the streaming giants and their parent companies,” was how the Wall Street team put it in a May 3 research note. The last time that there was widespread production stoppages was when COVID-19 hit stateside in March 2020, which also happened to be a year that Hollywood studio conglomerates grew free cash flow, as analyst firm MoffettNathanson has noted. Netflix raised its free cash flow estimate $1.5 billion in full year 2023 from $3.5 billion. Notably, Netflix disclosed that it is upping its free cash flow estimate to $5 billion-plus for the full year, citing “lower cash content spend” due to the impact of the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA work stoppages and “timing of production starts.” The update on free cash flow - a metric Wall Street uses to gauge how much money is left over for a company once all financial obligations are met - is a window into how major conglomerates are navigating the strikes. 'Jennifer Hudson Show' Follows Other Daytime Shows in Delaying Premiere During Strikes And we very much hoped to reach an agreement by now.” “We make deals all the time, we are constantly at the table negotiating with writers, with directors, with actors, with producers, with everyone across the industry. “Let me start by making something absolutely clear: This strike is not an outcome that we wanted,” Sarandos said on an earnings call, noting that he grew up in a union household with an electrician father who had gone on strike. In a high stakes moment for Hollywood amid a double strike of both actors and writers, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos took a conciliatory tone on the impasse after the company reported blockbuster subscriber gains in its earnings report on Wednesday.
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