WarnerMedia leads 15% revenue rise at AT&T

AT&T’s revenues totalled $45.7bn (£35.44bn) for the third quarter of 2018, up 15% from last year, and largely due to its recent Time Warner acquisition.

The newly branded WarnerMedia contributed to $8.2bn in new revenue for the business through its HBO, Turner and Warner Bros. divisions.

Turner revenues reached $3bn, up 3.9% year-on-year, while Warner Bros. revenues were up by 7% year-on-year to $3.7bn and largely driven by box office hits such as Crazy Rich Asians and The Meg.

WarnerMedia’s Home Box Office division, which includes HBO brands, reached $1.6bn, up 2.4% year over year.

By comparison, AT&T’s Entertainment Group, which includes services such as DirecTV, delivered $11.6bn in revenue, down 7% from 2017.

While the telecoms company beat revenue expectations, it missed profit forecasts, which sent shares down 2.8% in premarket trading.

AT&T reported a net income of $4.7bn, or 90 cents per share, where analysts were expecting 94 cents per share.

“I’m pleased with the progress we made on a number of fronts in the third quarter,” said AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson. “WarnerMedia was immediately accretive in its first full quarter, contributing 5 cents to EPS, and our free cash flow grew by double digits,”

AT&T is looking to aggressively expand its WarnerMedia offering in the near future. John Stankey, the newly appointed chief executive of the department, revealed intentions to grow the hours of HBO content currently available in July.

The telecoms company also plans to launch a new streaming service that builds on HBO and WarnerMedia content for the fourth quarter of 2019 that would compete with the likes of Netflix and Amazon.