Disney wins this round: Here’s where the streaming giants stand at the end of earnings season

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4 years ago

August 13, 2021

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Cars drive past a sign featuring Mickey Mouse at the entrance to Walt Disney World on the day that portions of the theme park, including the Magic Kingdom, reopened to guests after being closed since mid-March due the coronavirus pandemic.

Paul Hennessy | SOPA Images | Getty Images

This round, Disney beat Netflix.

Disney’s continued growth, juxtaposed with a disappointing quarter for Netflix, was the big story of this quarter’s earnings season. Disney benefited from a handful of popular movies that it placed directly on its Disney+ service in the quarter ended June 30, such as “Cruella” and “Luca,” while Netflix is banking on a return to growth next quarter, when hit originals such as “Sex Education” and “Money Heist” return to the service.

Disney+ and Hotstar, Disney’s Indian streaming service, added 12.4 million new subscribers from last quarter, while Netflix added just 1 million new customers. Last quarter, Disney added almost 9 million new Disney+ subscribers and Netflix added about 4 million new customers.

“Last quarter, we had a little bit of weakness in streaming subs both at Netflix and Disney. The weakness continued for Netflix, but it didn’t for Disney,” said Mark Zgutowicz, an analyst at Rosenblatt Equity Research, in a CNBC interview. “Disney+ is about 90 million subs behind Netflix globally now. With this number today, it’s tracking toward a 20 million net add gain on Netflix this year.”

All of the big streaming video players have reported earnings this quarter. The following is a rundown of where all the major streaming services stand:

Netflix

209 million global paying subscribers (Up 1 million from last quarter)
73.95 million subscribers in U.S. and Canada
ARPU for U.S. and Canada: $14.54

Disney

Disney+ (including Hotstar): 116 million subscribers, $4.16 global ARPU (Up 12.4 million from last quarter)
Hulu SVOD only: 39.1 million subscribers, $13.15 ARPU
Hulu SVOD+Live TV: 3.7 million subscribers, $84.09 ARPU
ESPN+: 14.9 million subscribers, $4.47 ARPU

Amazon Prime Video

More than 175 million Amazon Prime members have streamed shows and movies in the past year (No updates given during second-quarter earnings)
Prime memberships cost $12.99 a month or $119 a year, but offer many benefits other than streaming video — including free one-day or two-day shipping on most Amazon packages. Amazon does not break out ARPU by Prime members.

Apple

Apple TV+ subscribers: ? (No updates given during second-quarter earnings)
ARPU: ?

Apple‘s free one-year trials to Apple TV+, which it gives away with new hardware such as iPhones, are now starting to expire for many customers, which could spur the company to offer an update on its next earnings call.

NBCUniversal’s Peacock

54 million “signups” (Up 12 million from last quarter)
More than 20 million monthly active accounts
ARPU: ?
Three tiers: Free with commercials, $4.99 a month for fewer ads and more content, $9.99 a month ad-free

Comcast‘s NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC, successfully used the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Games to push Peacock subscriptions. NBCUniversal will likely add more Olympics-related signups next quarter, as it reported Peacock statistics only about half way through the Games.

While the company has not released an official figure for ARPU yet, NBCUniversal estimated in January that Peacock would deliver $6 to $7 a month across its three tiers.

WarnerMedia’s HBO and HBO Max

67.5 million global subscribers (Up 3.6 million)
47 million domestic subscribers (Up 2.8 million)
ARPU: $11.90 domestically

AT&T raised its year-end global subscriber forecast for HBO Max to 73 million from 70 million in its second-quarter earnings statement. As of March, it expects 120 to 150 million subscribers by the end of 2025.

ViacomCBS

More than 42 million subscribers across Paramount+, Showtime, Noggin, BET+, and other platforms (Up about 6.5 million, the “overwhelming majority” of which came from Paramount+)
Over 52 million monthly average Pluto TV users (Up 2 million)
ARPU: ?

Average revenue per user remains a question mark for ViacomCBS, which has still chosen not to reveal the statistic.

“We’ve been on a journey of increased disclosure over time,” ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish told CNBC. “We will continue to evolve disclosure.”

Discovery

18 million direct-to-consumer subscribers as of Aug. 3 (up 3 million)
Overall ARPU: About $7 per month
ARPU for ad-supported Discovery+: More than $10 per month

Starz

28.9 million global subscribers (Down 600,000), 16.7 million of which are streaming
ARPU: About $6 per month

Lionsgate‘s Starz actually lost total subscribers in the quarter, though the decline relates to cancellations of the company’s linear service. Streaming customers rose 58% year-over-year to 16.7 million globally.

AMC Networks

Total subscribers: ?
ARPU: ?

AMC Networks said earlier this month it expects to have at least 9 million paid streaming subscribers across its platforms by the end of the year. The company’s flagship streaming product is AMC+, which may see a boost in subscribers after signing a deal with Verizon earlier this week, giving certain subscribers a free trial of the product for 6 or 12 months.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.

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Technology

Amazon suspends engineer who protested company’s work with Israeli government

Published

1 hour ago

September 11, 2025

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Amazon suspends engineer who protested company's work with Israeli government

Amazon suspended a software engineer who protested the company’s work with the Israeli government, CNBC has confirmed.

Ahmed Shahrour, a Palestinian engineer who works for Amazon’s Whole Foods business and is based in Seattle, was informed Monday morning that he was being suspended with pay “until further notice” after he posted messages on Slack criticizing the company’s ties to Israel.

“It has come to Amazon’s attention that a post you made in multiple internal company Slack channels may violate multiple policies,” an Amazon human resources representative wrote in a message, which was viewed by CNBC. The company said in the message that it’s investigating the incident.

Earlier Monday, Shahrour posted messages across several internal Slack channels and sent a letter to Amazon executives, including CEO Andy Jassy, detailing his concerns.

Shahrour urged the company to drop Project Nimbus, Amazon and Google’s joint $1.2 billion cloud computing contract launched in 2021 to provide the Israeli government with artificial intelligence tools, data centers and other infrastructure.

“Every day I write code at Whole Foods, I remember my brothers and sisters in Gaza being starved by Israel’s man-made blockade,” Shahrour, who joined Amazon three years ago, wrote in the letter. “I live in a state of constant dissonance: maintaining the tools that make this company profit, while my people are burned and starved with the help of that very profit. I am left with no choice but to resist directly.”

The letter was earlier reported by independent journalist Kali Hays.

Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser didn’t specifically address Shahrour’s situation.

“We don’t tolerate discrimination, harassment, or threatening behavior or language of any kind in our workplace, and when any conduct of that nature is reported, we investigate it and take appropriate action based on our findings,” Glasser wrote in an email to CNBC.

The company didn’t respond to questions about its work with Israel or its policies for moderating employee posts on internal channels.

Tech workers at Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Palantir and other companies have become more outspoken in their criticism of business dealings with the Israeli military.

Microsoft last month fired two employees who participated in a protest inside the company’s headquarters. In April 2024, Google terminated 28 employees after a series of protests against labor conditions and its involvement in Project Nimbus. Tech firms have ramped up security at some conferences in recent months after an uptick in protests.

Amazon hasn’t acknowledged the Nimbus contract beyond stating that it provides technology to customers “wherever they are located.” Google has previously said it provides generally available cloud computing services to the Israeli government that aren’t “directed at highly sensitive, classified or military workloads.” Microsoft said last month that most of its work with Israel Defense Forces involves cybersecurity for the country, and that the company intends to provide technology in an ethical way.

As part of the suspension, Amazon revoked Shahrour’s access to company email and tools, and removed his Slack posts, he told CNBC in an interview. Shahrour said Amazon didn’t state what policies his posts violated.

The letter also alleges Amazon has taken steps to “silence” pro-Palestinian employees who have criticized the war in Gaza. Amazon recently issued a warning to an engineer who shared an article about American doctors volunteering in Gaza and it fired an employee in France who spoke out against Israel on social media, Shahrour said. CNBC confirmed the account with a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to confidentiality.

The company has deleted posts in the “Arabs at Amazon” Slack channel that discussed the conflict in Gaza, while posts in other channels disparaging Palestinians weren’t removed, Shahrour said.

“It feels like I can’t voice anything, and if I do, I’m going to get a warning,” he said.

Microsoft employees earlier this year expressed concern that the company blocked Outlook emails containing the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” “genocide,” “apartheid” and “IOF off Azure,” while messages with the word “Israel” could go through, CNBC reported in May.

A Microsoft spokesperson previously said the company took steps to “try and reduce” widely shared emails that were sent to employees who hadn’t “opted in.”

WATCH: Israel’s plays to take over Gaza City

Technology

Adobe’s stock gains on earnings, revenue beat

Published

2 hours ago

September 11, 2025

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Adobe's stock gains on earnings, revenue beat

An Adobe sign hangs along Main Street during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 27, 2025 in Park City, Utah.

David Becker | Getty Images

Adobe reported fiscal third-quarter results that topped analysts’ estimates. The design software maker’s shares rose in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:

Earnings per share: $5.31 adjusted vs. $5.18 expected
Revenue: $5.99 billion vs. $5.91 billion expected

Revenue increased 11% from $5.41 billion a year earlier, Adobe said in a statement. Net income rose to $1.77 billion, or $4.18 per share, from $1.68 billion, or $3.76 per share, a year ago.

For the fourth quarter, the company says earnings per share will be $5.35 to $5.40, topping the average analyst estimate of $5.34. Adobe’s guidance for revenue for the quarter is $6.08 billion to $6.13 billion, while analysts expected $6.08 billion, according to LSEG.

Adobe said it expects annualized revenue in its digital media business to increase 11.3% for the fiscal year, up from a prior forecast of 11% growth. Digital media revenue for the fourth quarter will be $4.56 billion to $4.51 billion, beating the $4.51 billion average estimate, according to StreetAccount.

As of Thursday’s close, Adobe’s stock was down 21% this year, badly underperforming tech peers and the broader Nasdaq, which is up 14%.

This is developing news. Please check back for updates.

Technology

Oracle shares retreat 6% after sharpest rally in more than 30 years

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3 hours ago

September 11, 2025

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Oracle shares retreat 6% after sharpest rally in more than 30 years

Safra A. Catz, CEO of Oracle, on Oct. 7, 2024.

Marco Bello | Reuters

Oracle shares closed down 6% on Thursday, a day after the stock closed at a record high, following an analyst note expressing concern that most of the company’s upcoming growth is coming from a single client: OpenAI.

The software vendor has seen its stock go on a wild ride this week after CEO Safra Catz on Tuesday said that Oracle had “signed four multi-billion-dollar contracts with three different customers” in the latest quarter. The company’s remaining performance obligation, a measure of contracted revenue that has not yet been recognized, swelled to $455 billion, up 359% year over year.

In its forecasts, Oracle called for cloud infrastructure revenue to expand 14-fold by 2030.

In extended trading on Tuesday, Oracle stock moved up 30% following the company announcing fiscal first-quarter results. On Wednesday, the stock ended the day up nearly 36%, closing at a record high of $328.33.

The build-out is part of a broad expansion across technology to put in place the necessary infrastructure to meet demand for applications that draw on sophisticated artificial intelligence models that typically run on Nvidia chips.

But the excitement around Oracle’s projections were tempered after The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday reported that OpenAI is set to pay Catz’s company $300 billion over five years. That report came after OpenAI during the quarter announced an agreement with Oracle to build 4.5 gigawatts of U.S. data center capacity. The two companies declined to comment on the report.

“Our enthusiasm for Oracle’s backlog announcements is significantly tempered by the report that it came almost entirely from OpenAI,” Gil Luria, an analyst with a neutral rating on Oracle shares, wrote in a note distributed to clients on Thursday.