Netflix reported losing subscribers in a disappointing earnings call this week, while HBO is announcing adding 13 million subscribers in one year.
Of course, it is important to note that HBO and HBO Max are still far from where Netflix stands in the number of paying customers. Regardless, a positive earning call report always encourages investors and does wonderful things for stocks.
Its parent company, AT&T, reported that HBO and HBO Max now has 76.8 million subscribers in total at the end of Q1 2022. It had added 12.8 million year over year and 3 million in the previous quarter.
With Netflix still having over 221 million subscribers, HBO is not yet much of a threat to it. Nether is Disney Plus, which has a total of 130 million paying users. Yet, the streaming industry is quite slippery, and no one can afford to snooze, as the massive drop in Netflix stock earlier this week indicated.
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HBO and HBO Max can thank Warner Bros.’s strategy of simultaneously releasing movies at the cinemas and on its streaming platform for its growth. Now that this strategy ended in 2021, it will be interesting to see how the platform plans to keep its subscribers growing. Although, it still gets to show the movies after a 45-day exclusive cinema run.
Likely, one of the ways it plans to expand is in the password-sharing department, where users can pool cash together to share profiles or get on a family-like plan.
AT&T CEO John Stankey had said during the call, “We were thoughtful about how we built the product and that we gave customers enough flexibility but we don’t want to see rampant abuse.”
The last part of Stankey’s statement is likely a lesson learned from Netflix’s challenges in using the same strategy.
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