{"id":625552,"date":"2026-08-07T15:20:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T15:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/625552\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T15:20:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T15:20:13","slug":"starz-posts-first-quarter-revenue-dip-digital-led-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/625552\/","title":{"rendered":"Starz Posts First Quarter Revenue Dip, Digital-Led Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tStarz<\/a> executives were bullish Friday about the premium cabler\u2019s digital-led transformation making headway in the second quarter, despite posting a revenue dip and a widened loss.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring the three months to June 30, overall revenues at the premium cabler were $307.9 million, just down from a year-earlier $319.7 million. OTT streaming revenue was virtually unchanged at $221.3 million, while linear and other revenue fell back to $86.6 million, compared to $98.6 million in the same period of 2025, due to a continued secular decline in the traditional cable TV business. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe expect this revenue trend to continue, putting us on a solid path toward achieving our outlook of positive annual OTT revenue growth in 2026,\u201d Jeffrey Hirsch, president and CEO of Starz, said in prepared remarks to analysts on Friday as his company has focused on streaming-led growth to expand its market share. Investors in pre-market trading on Friday sent shares in Starz down by 55 cents, or just over 2 percent, to $25.19. <\/p>\n

\n\tStarz reported a widened net loss of $189.4 million, against year-earlier $42.6 million net loss, due mainly to one-off restructuring costs of $147 million in the quarter to account for contract termination fees after ending a Universal Pictures post pay one film output deal in April 2026. Cleaning up the balance sheet comes amid a strategic shift to digital services and streaming TV growth to go beyond legacy linear cable packages.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe continue to expect this to be the final content restructuring charge of this magnitude going forward, which sets the company up for meaningfully lower restructuring activity from here,\u201d Scott Macdonald, Starz CFO, said in his prepared remarks to be given during a pre-market analyst call. <\/p>\n

\n\tStarz has also looked after its separation from Lionsgate to develop its own IP in-house and on a lower per-episode content cost overall, and to draw from within the Power and Outlander universes for new series. The company expects content costs to come in at around $600 million annually, with per-episode budget costs to be $2 million to $2.5 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Friday, Starz pointed to momentum in building viewer engagement with new series like Fightland, the finale of Outlander and a premiere for season 5 of the urban-oriented Raising Kanan series. \u201cThe content portfolio in the quarter generated the second-highest audience engagement quarter of all time. This marks the fourth consecutive quarter of engagement growth since we separated,\u201d Hirsch added.<\/p>\n

\n\tStarz also has upcoming the return of P-Valley and season 2 of Blood of my Blood from the Outlander universe. And the platform has Antoine Fuqua\u2019s Michael biopic landing on Starz on August 10 on the heels of its breakout theatrical run with an eye to driving more subscriber acquisition and engagement. <\/p>\n

\n\tAfter four Power series were recently licensed to Netflix in much of the world, Hirsch said additional licensing deals for Starz originals were expected with other international platforms. \u201cAs we build our slate back and get volume, it gives us opportunities to do output deals around the world,\u201d he told analysts. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe financial story for Starz is getting stronger and simpler every quarter: growing OTT revenue, expanding margins, growing free cash flow, and reducing leverage. We\u2019re confident in our trajectory, and we look forward to continuing to demonstrate our progress,\u201d CFO Macdonald added. With that confidence, Starz raised its adjusted OIBDA guidance from low single-digits to mid single-digits and to reach a 20 percent adjusted OIBDA margin target in the back half of 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Starz executives were bullish Friday about the premium cabler\u2019s digital-led transformation making headway in the second quarter, despite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[265],"tags":[18,117,19,17,34774,128],"class_list":["post-625552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-starz","tag-tv"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117054906409725245","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}