Warner Bros. Discovery Q2 2026 Earnings Call: Complete Transcript

Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ: WBD ) released second-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Thursday. Read the complete transcript below. This transcript is brought to you APIs.

For real-time access to our entire catalog, please visit for a consultation. The full earnings call is available at Summary Warner Bros. Discovery reported over $3 billion in streaming revenues for the first time in Q2 2026, with HBO Max showing significant financial progress and a 60% improvement in adjusted EBITDA. The company's content, including popular series like 'The Pit' and 'Euphoria,' continues to attract large global audiences, with HBO Max leading the industry in Emmy nominations.

Warner Bros. Discovery highlighted growth in its global networks and resilience in sports broadcasting, with notable increases in viewership for key sports events. Management expressed confidence in achieving long-term EBITDA targets for the studio segment, despite a challenging year for film production, and emphasized a strong pipeline for 2027. The company is optimistic about its strategic initiatives, including the integration of HBO Max globally, partnerships, and bundling strategies with other platforms to reduce churn and enhance subscriber acquisition.

Full Transcript OPERATOR Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Warner Bros. Discovery second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participant lines are in listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session.

Additionally, please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded. I would like to hand the conference over to Mr. Peter Lee, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin.

Peter Lee, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations Good morning and thank you for joining us for our Q2 2026 earnings call. Joining me today from Warner Bros. B. Perrette, CEO and President, Global Streaming and Games.

com. Today's presentation will include forward-looking statements that we make pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements about the benefits of the proposed transaction between Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount; guidance; future financial and operating results; the combined company's plans, objectives, expectations and intentions; and other statements that are not historical facts.

Such statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of WBD's management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties outside of our control that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K and its reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K.

WBD is not under any obligation and expressly disclaims any obligation to update, alter or otherwise revise any forward-looking statements, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by applicable law. In addition, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures on this call. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the closest GAAP financial measure can be found in our earnings release and in our trending schedule, which can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website.

I will turn the call over to David for some brief remarks after which we will take your questions. Before doing so, I ask that you limit your questions to topics related to our Q2 results and related business and financial topics. As noted in our shareholder letter, management will not be taking questions regarding the proposed Paramount-Skydance transaction, and with that David Zaslav, President and Chief Executive Officer I'll turn it over to David. Good morning, everyone.

From the beginning we've said that our plan and strategy is to build the world's leading storytelling company, one that attracts and retains the best creative talent, reaches global audiences and ultimately creates shareholder value. For all that's changing in how people consume entertainment, we have held firm to our conviction that there is no substitute for creative excellence and quality storytelling, and it's driving strong results. Nowhere is it more evident than our streaming business, where the breadth, artistry and cultural influence of HBO programming across the globe is translating into great financial progress.

For HBO Max as a streaming offering, in Q2 our streaming segment delivered more than $3 billion in revenues for the first time ever, as subscriber-related revenue growth accelerated 200 basis points sequentially to 10% ex-FX, with positive engagement and subscriber trends. And just as important, streaming generated $512 million in adjusted EBITDA, a more than 60% EBITDA improvement over the same period in 2025, and a nearly 17% adjusted EBITDA margin. -only HBO streaming business losing $2 billion plus in 2022 to a global, high-growth asset, where HBO is globally recognized as the highest-quality streaming service in the world.

HBO series are finding a bigger global audience more consistently than ever before. So far in 2026, The Pit, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, House of the Dragon and Euphoria have each averaged at least 25 million global viewers per episode, with several programs exceeding 30 million average viewers. And with the new season of Gilded Age and the debuts of Lanterns and Harry Potter coming soon, as well as our strong content pipeline in 2027, we expect that momentum to continue. This year's Emmy Awards also attest to our commitment to storytelling excellence, with WBD leading the industry with 150 nominations.

HBO Max alone led the industry and garnered 122 Emmy nominations spanning 21 individual programs, including 26 for season two of The Pit and 25 for the final season of Hacks. And Warner Bros. Television again showed that it is among the world's best television producers with 52 Emmy nominations, including 28 for programs that we produce for third-party platforms like Shrinking and Abbott Elementary. Our quality programming is also fueling our global networks' resilience as they contend with continued headwinds.

In Q2, our roster of premium sports properties showed its value, as we saw the highest-rated national championship basketball game ever on TNT Sports, a more than 20% increase in viewership for the MLB regular season thus far, and a 50% viewership increase for the NHL playoffs. In a turbulent geopolitical moment, the quality, trustworthiness and reliability of CNN's journalism again proved itself in Q2. CNN linear viewership increased 24% over the previous year, and minutes spent across all CNN platforms increased 19%, and our network brands were home to four of the top 10 shows in general entertainment across all cable networks during the second quarter.

Just recently, Discovery's Shark Week saw its highest year-over-year growth in more than a decade, with Discovery ranked as the number one cable network in primetime among people aged 25 to 54 across Shark Week's first three nights. There's no question that media is by nature a business full of hits and misses, and you see that reflected in our studios' results. While a handful of recent films have underperformed expectations, importantly, we've spent years transforming and diversifying our studio segment to better manage risk and volatility.

The breadth of this business today—across theatrical, television, licensing, games, experiences, retail and consumer products—has greatly improved its resilience and ability to generate consistent shareholder value. We are excited by what's in the pipeline, from our remaining 2026 and 2027 film slate to Ted Lasso to opportunities generated by Harry Potter. Over the long term, we continue to expect this segment to deliver our goal of generating over $3 billion in adjusted EBITDA. Taken together, our results this quarter show how much we've readied each segment of our business for the future.

We've succeeded in making HBO Max a highly valuable global streaming service and are seeing strong financial returns now after years of heavy investment. We've optimized our global networks and continue to invest in general entertainment, sports and news that serve tens of millions of global viewers. And over the last year, we've shown our studios remain the industry's creative leader while simultaneously transforming its operating model and financial profile. As stated in our shareholder letter, we remain confident that our agreed-upon sale to Paramount-Skydance will be completed.

We are excited for what's ahead in the remainder of 2026 and beyond, and with that we welcome your questions. OPERATOR We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, just press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. And if you would like to withdraw your question, just press star one again.

We'll pause for a moment to compile the Q&A roster, and our first question comes from the line of Steven Cahall with Wells Fargo. Steven, please go ahead. Steven Cahall, Analyst at Wells Fargo Thank you. David, can you speak a little more to the scripted show pipeline you've got upcoming on HBO?

I think you've recently finished some big series including Hacks and Euphoria. Maybe The White Lotus and The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms fall into there, but will there be fewer returning shows in 2027? And are there any big IP shows that we should be aware of now that you've expanded into more territories globally to drive the growth in the segment? And then on the studio, I know you had a remarkable year last year.

You talked about how it's a lumpy business, understandably a little lighter this year. As we just think about a path to getting back to $3 billion in EBITDA, I'm struggling a little bit to get there. You weren't quite there in 2025 and kind of everything went well. So help us understand how you can get to that $3 billion in EBITDA level at the studio longer term.

Thanks. David Zaslav, President and Chief Executive Officer Thanks so much, Steven. Let me just start with HBO. Casey Bloys and Amy and Franny, the whole team over there have done a remarkable job.

In 2022, HBO was basically producing almost all of its content, but they weren't using Warner Bros. We've teamed them up together, and we've invested significantly in driving the overall quality of the content. And Casey and his team now have the strongest HBO we've ever had. Together with all of the tentpole shows, we also have local content around the world.

We have Lanterns coming up. White Lotus is coming back, Gilded Age is coming soon, and we greenlit Harry Potter for the next 10 consecutive years. I've already seen the first three episodes. It's very strong.

We'll be debuting that on Christmas Day. We have a very strong HBO, and we're seeing it in the engagement, we're seeing it in the overall growth, and we're seeing it in how people see HBO as a quality service that they can rely on with their family. Before we get to the free cash flow—JB, we've seen—so we've seen a lot of real growth across Europe. Just talk about what we're seeing with Max because not only is it a terrific turnaround, it's a high-growth business now, and next quarter will even be stronger.

Jean-Briac Perrette, President & CEO - Global Streaming & Games And Stephen, on the content side, just to echo what David said, we actually have 2027 as arguably our best year yet. We obviously have White Lotus coming back. We've got Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which is obviously a breakthrough series that came out this year that didn't exist 12 months ago and that Casey and the team came up with to be able to be repeatable on a frequent basis. You've got Peacemaker coming back, got The Last of Us coming back.

So we feel actually even better about '27 than we already did about '26. So we feel very strongly about that. Our original content efforts around the world, as David said, we're starting to see real traction with more and more shows from the international markets, particularly as Casey and his team have continued to get closer to the development in those markets.

And so we're excited about the local content coming out of the international markets and we're starting to see it because not only did you see, obviously, us return double-digit distribution growth this quarter, but we still were lapping, for part of the quarter, this related-party deal that we disclosed a while back. And if you looked at it excluding that related-party deal, our distribution growth would actually have been in the low teens and that trajectory looks very solid for the remainder of the year.

So a return to not only double-digit but sort of teens-level growth on distribution is a testament to both distribution- and subscriber-led growth as well as monetization on ad sales, engagement, and all the other levers that we're continuing to push. Gunnar Wiedenfels, Chief Financial Officer All right, thank you, JB and Steve. This is Gunnar on the studio. Look, I have zero doubts about our long-term $3 billion EBITDA target for the studio and what's important here.

Let me go through a couple points. Number one, the quarter, obviously, you know, in the film business wasn't what we expected. At the same time, Yuri mentioned this Q2 of 2025 was an outstanding quarter. We had massive content licensing deals, one very big one internal, and then we had Sinners and Minecraft.

So, you know, it was a tough comp. But nonetheless, you know, against that year, the film business is going to have a harder time this year, no doubt. What matters here is we have invested significant amounts of money, time, management attention into diversifying and transforming the studio so that we're in a position to be able to digest a quarter like this. And these investments are going to pay off.

If we go through business by business, you know, we've always said that we're really looking forward to 2027 for the film business. The lineup is fantastic. You know, it's a richer scale and more promising tentpole IP in there relative to 2026. So that's really something to look forward to.

And our plan longer term assumes a larger number of films than what we're seeing this year. Warner Bros. TV, as David said a minute ago, is performing really well. More than 80 shows on air across every platform with all of the key buyers.

And one thing that's going to help us going forward, if you take a step back, we're going to start benefiting from SVOD shows coming back to replenish our library. We've gone through a bit of an adjustment. If you look at a decade worth of this business going from predominantly broadcast-focused production to more and more SVOD production with longer windows and a larger upfront margin and fee, that's going to come back and start replenishing and driving library and associated licensing and downstream revenues going forward. So there's a really positive outlook there for that business.

I mentioned the investments that we have made in sort of the ancillary areas like consumer products, retail, our tours business. Those are things that were underdeveloped in Warner Bros. And we have spent years, you know, deploying the capital and setting the company up for great returns with very predictable, high-margin, highly cash-generative returns. And we're approaching this in a much more integrated way now where these things are not an afterthought but part of the planning from the outset with every new story that we're developing.

And then, finally, games, where JB and the team have restructured the portfolio. LEGO Batman launching this year, very encouraging as sort of, you know, first installment in that new strategy. And here we see growth opportunities down the line as well. And the biggest individual title to look forward to, obviously, here is the second installment of Hogwarts Legacy.

So you're taking all these together, you know, we have a detailed plan for the next three to five years with a lot to look forward to. OPERATOR Thank you, Steve. Next question. Your next question comes from the line of Rich Greenfield with LightShed Partners.

Rich, please go ahead. Rich Greenfield, Analyst at LightShed Partners Thanks, guys. You appear pretty confident on the studio side about the future. Could you just comment—Gunnar, I just want to elaborate.

You made a comment about ramping up film production or the number of films. How many films are you making this year, how many films next year, and how confident are you about maintaining that level of theatrical output from 2027 and beyond? That would be really helpful. And then, Gunnar, in a worst-case scenario where the Paramount deal didn't happen—and I know you're planning on closing the transaction—but if it didn't happen, given all of the work you did before the transaction to split the companies, how many months or how much time do you think it would take to actually effectuate a split of the company if a deal didn't happen?

Thank you. Gunnar Wiedenfels, Chief Financial Officer Rich. Just first and foremost, we're confident this transaction will close. And we've been trying to drive the value of the company to deliver to P-Sky and to David the best company possible.