Naveen Chopra, CFO of Paramount Global, breaks down the growth areas from the company's Q1 earnings and talks about competition in the streaming space.

Opening Bell

Paramount Adds 6.3 Million Subscribers in First Quarter to Top 62 Million

joining me now is naveen chopra CFO of paramount. Levine, glad to have you back today. You know, this report, the most interesting part of it to me was a subscriber number. I mean paramount added 6.3 million global streaming subscribers in the first quarter, including nearly 40 million for paramount plus. I mean that's pretty impressive, especially when you look at other streamers who recently have seen subscriber loss, you guys reporting a nice continuous growth here. What were some of the main drivers of that subscriber growth? Yeah, it's great to be back with you and uh, I think you're focused on exactly the right thing. Um, the addition is 6.8 million subscribers for paramount plus in the quarter, obviously very strong result and in terms of understanding that I think one of the things that people are starting to recognize is the fact that one of the long held beliefs about our industry may actually need to be revisited. And what I mean by that is the following. It wasn't that long ago that people looked at traditional media businesses as a barrier to driving streaming growth. And I think what we've proven with our results over the last several quarters is that those traditional businesses, theatrical business, cable business, broadcast television business are actually accelerants to what we are doing in the streaming area and they fundamentally change both the growth potential and the economics of streaming and that's what you're seeing in, in our results both in paramount plus and many of our other streaming services, including the ad supported side of the business where we had Almost 60% growth year on year. So we remain very bullish about the category as a whole, from paramount plus two to Pluto Tv. I mean that expanded its monthly active users to nearly 68 million. How is paramount then positioning itself in this linear in in the linear tv space and capitalizing on that? Well, we are fundamentally about um creating a broad offering and we think about that both in terms of our content portfolio and we are, we have, I think the broadest content offering in streaming, which takes advantage of the breadth of all of our linear assets. We go well beyond scripted entertainment, which has really been the bedrock of legacy streaming services to now. The full portfolio of content that we know consumers uh enjoy that includes sports, that includes news and events, that includes big theatrical movies, that includes kids programming. It includes unscripted and we think it's really about providing that full diversity of content that is going to be critical to the next generation of streaming, Focusing on the top line a little bit here. You know, excluding the impact of the Super Bowl. TV media advertising net revenue grew by 6%, but under a bit of pressure. Right as we have seen, kind of just the overall advertising space, we've seen kind of Pullbacks happening there. What are some of the main challenges in maintaining this growth, especially amid the current environment. Well, we've talked about our tv media business or our traditional business as uh business that we think can continue to be stable, can deliver uh what we've described as low single digit growth uh, in the future and we continue to be very confident in, in that that approach. It's a business that benefits, as I said earlier from its breath. That also benefits from the fact that we've been able to uh drive growth on on the advertising side by um, taking advantage of um not only our breath but the ability to combine linear with streaming. It's a business where on the affiliate side we benefit from renewables and deep relationships with a lot of our distribution partners. And there's also a content licensing component of it that has significant growth potential um as well. And importantly we're also managing the cost side of that business. We think there's uh future opportunities to continue to run that in a very efficient way that ultimately helps preserve the attractive margin and cash flow production that we get out of that part of the business naveen. I'm coming up against the clock and at the end of the show here. So I want to ask you about 30 seconds left here, pam around pictures that opened up what four number one films in a row last quarter, what's your outlook when it comes to the return to the theater and what's your thought process in terms of those same day release models that we saw during the pandemic to kind of boost subscriber numbers. What's the future of that? Yeah, we're very excited about what paramount pictures has has come in. We've had a great run in Q one. You mentioned four releases that were number one in the box office. We got Top Gun coming later this month, which based on early reviews, were incredibly excited about that's uh that's gonna be a big theatrical release And we liked the combination of the theatrical model and streaming. We've been very successful with our 45 day fast follow strategy. You saw that with movies like scream and jackass will be bringing both lost city and sonic to, to paramount plus under that model. And we think it's really the best of both worlds in terms of capturing a lot of the value from the theatrical window, but also getting those movies onto paramount plus at a point in time where they're, they're really fresh and exciting and drive a lot of engagement on the streaming side. Speaking of fresh and exciting, I will be in line for Top Gun. That's one that I'm waiting for. Thank you so much for your time, naveen chopra, chief financial officer of Viacom Cbs always good to have you