Earnings Call Transcript - STRZ Q1 2026

Operator, Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Starz First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nilay Shah, Investor Relations.

Nilay Shah, Investor Relations

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for Starz Entertainment's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. We'll begin with opening remarks from our President and CEO, Jeffrey Hirsch; followed by remarks from our CFO, Scott MacDonald. Also joining us on the call today is Alison Hoffman, President of Starz Networks. After our opening remarks, we'll open the call for questions. The matters discussed on this call include forward-looking statements, including those regarding expected future performance. Such statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially and adversely from those described in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. This includes the risk factors set forth in our most recently filed 10-K for Starz Entertainment Corp. Starz undertakes no obligation to publicly release the results of any revisions to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect any future events or circumstances. The matters discussed today will also include non-GAAP measures. The reconciliation for these and additional required information is available in the 8-K we filed this afternoon, which is available on the Starz Investor Relations website at investors.starz.com. I'll now turn the call over to Jeff.

Jeffrey Hirsch, President and CEO

Thank you, Nilay, and thank you all for joining us. Today marks the 1-year anniversary of our separation. The Starz of today is structurally stronger than the business was when we separated a year ago. Over the last 12 months, we've made significant strides in setting the business up for long-term value creation. We have been laser-focused on achieving our financial goals of increasing margins to 20%, converting 70% of adjusted OIBDA to unlevered free cash flow and delevering to 2.5x as quickly as possible. I'm happy to report in our first year, we have met or exceeded all our key financial targets, created a new licensing revenue stream by restructuring the Canadian business, started to rebuild our content library through ownership, announced our first co-commission partner, helping to improve unit economics of our originals, de-aged our slate while expanding our most popular franchises. And overall, we have unwound many of the constraints of operating within a studio structure. As I outlined on the last call, calendar '26 will serve as a financial inflection point for the business. Cash flow timing is now closer aligned with industry norms. Adjusted OIBDA is becoming more predictable and consistent, and we are managing the business against the metrics that matter most: OTT revenue growth, adjusted OIBDA, free cash flow and delevering. We are off to a great start in calendar '26. We had a strong first quarter, meeting or exceeding all financial guides, which Scott will discuss in more detail. Our structural work is showing up directly in the numbers, and our content continues to perform. The finale of Power Book IV: Force started the quarter off strong. The premiere Season 8 of Outlander achieved a four-year series high in its premiere week. And just after the quarter, we released The Housemaid, and it quickly set records as our best-performing Pay 1 film in both acquisition and streaming viewership. I expect this momentum will continue through the year. We have one of the strongest content slates ahead with our proven hit series, Raising Kanan, Outlander: Blood of My Blood and P-Valley, supported by the upcoming MICHAEL biopic. Congratulations to John and the Lionsgate team for the great box office performance. It will further strengthen our already robust schedule this year. In addition to our lineup of returning series, we announced this week that our first STARZ-owned original, Fightland, will premiere in just a few months on July 31. If you recall from the last quarter, we also announced Sky as the co-commission partner on Fightland, driving even more upside to the already favorable unit economics. We also continue to make advances in our ownership strategy beyond Fightland with the recently announced greenlight of another STARZ-owned original, the untitled Black Rodeo show. This family drama is set inside the thriving world of the Black Rodeo in Texas and production is set to begin this fall. This is another example of us continuing to build out our content library through ownership, which I remind you, allows us to control the cost from inception and globally monetize our IP. As we have continued to highlight, rightsizing the content cost structure of the business has been paramount to reaching our stated goal of 20% margin. Today, we are announcing that we have exited our Pay-Two agreement with Universal. The Universal titles, which we originally planned to air through calendar '28 are incredibly popular and bring with them tremendous box office strength. However, due to the high subscriber overlap between Amazon and Starz, these titles are heavily watched before they come to us in the Pay-Two window. This unique dynamic with Amazon has resulted in lower viewership than we originally projected. In order to replace the revenue component of the Pay-Two, we will reinvest and acquire high-performing titles at superior economics. As a result, I'm pleased to announce that our outlook for reaching 20% margin has moved 12 months forward to the back half of 2027 instead of exiting 2028. We are thankful to our partners at Universal for working with us to find a mutually beneficial solution. We continue to see two paths for value creation for the Starz business. First, our focus has been growing the core business to achieve the 20% margin guide. Second, we believe there's an additional path to growth through potential M&A opportunities. Our approach to M&A remains disciplined. Any strategic initiative must be complementary and additive to our core audience, must fit within an acceptable leverage parameter and create clear and identifiable value for our shareholders. But given the strength and the profitability of our core business, we do not need M&A to maximize shareholder value. Before I turn it over to Scott, I would like to reiterate how excited I am about the growth of our business going forward. The free cash flow conversion is materializing. We are advancing ownership of our content library. We've rightsized the overall content portfolio, and we are anticipating continued rapid delevering. Starz remains focused and committed to executing on our growth strategies. We said calendar '26 would be an important year in showcasing what the business will look like as a stand-alone. The first quarter serves as evidence of just that. Now let me hand it over to Scott to take you through the financial details.

Scott MacDonald, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Jeff, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to report that Q1 2026 was a strong quarter financially, and we delivered on or ahead of our key guidance metrics. Before I get into the financial details, I want to remind everyone that we are focused on four metrics going forward: OTT revenue growth, adjusted OIBDA, free cash flow and leverage. The decision to deemphasize subscriber counts is already being validated as pricing discipline and a focus on higher lifetime value customers are proving more valuable than maximizing quarter end subscribers. Let me start with revenue. OTT revenue in Q1 was $211 million, up from $210 million in Q4 2025. Total revenue in Q1 was $307 million, down from $323 million in Q4 2025. This sequential decline primarily reflects the timing of Canadian licensing revenue. The sequential growth in OTT revenue is an important benchmark, and it was driven by exactly what we set out to do, pricing discipline on both the acquisition and retention side, fewer low-priced entry offers, more annual and multi-month plans. This is deliberate and is improving the health of the business. While we are not disclosing ARPU directly, ARPU did grow on a sequential basis in the period. We expect ARPU to continue to build through 2026 as promotional customers convert to higher retail rates. In addition, we recently announced a price increase to $11.99, which will flow through the subscriber base starting in Q2. We continue to forecast positive OTT revenue growth in 2026 versus 2025 and are already ahead of where we expected to be at this stage of the year. Moving on to adjusted OIBDA. We delivered $58 million of adjusted OIBDA in Q1 2026, up sequentially from Q4 2025 due primarily to lower advertising and G&A expenses. On a year-over-year basis, adjusted OIBDA was down due to lower revenue and higher content amortization, offset by favorable advertising and marketing expenses. Importantly, adjusted OIBDA came in ahead of our internal plan, which gives us confidence in our full year guidance of low single-digit adjusted OIBDA growth. We also expect our quarterly adjusted OIBDA cadence to be more consistent in 2026 relative to 2025. In Q1, as part of our efforts to rightsize our content cost structure, we recorded a $139 million restructuring charge, the majority of which is related to the write-off of content with limited strategic value for our platforms. As the agreement with Universal was amended in April 2026, we will record the Pay-Two restructuring charge in the second quarter of 2026. The revised terms meaningfully improve our cash payment obligations, creating a significant reduction in cash content spend beginning in 2027. Moreover, we believe this is the final component of our post-separation content rightsizing efforts. Combined with the ongoing de-aging of our original slate and the growing owned content contribution, this gives us clear line of sight visibility to reaching our 20% adjusted OIBDA margin target in the back half of 2027, a full year ahead of our prior guidance. Cash content spend in Q1 was $113 million, down year-over-year due to the timing of spend on output movies and originals. For the full year 2026, we continue to expect content spend to come in below $650 million, a meaningful decline from 2025. We expect the convergence of content spend and programming amortization to improve significantly in 2026 as compared to 2025 and continue to improve thereafter. When they reach near parity, you will see the full benefit of our content strategy reflected in the cash flow statement. Unlevered free cash flow was $81 million in Q1 2026, up $147 million year-over-year, while equity free cash flow was up $136 million year-over-year to $69 million. I want to note that Q1 was positively impacted by lower content spend, which we expect to catch up in Q2. Accordingly, we are not raising our free cash flow outlook at this time. Turning to the balance sheet. As of March 31, our net debt was $523 million. Our leverage ratio at the end of Q1 was 3.1x, lower than our internal expectations for the period, and we remain confident in achieving our 2.7x year-end target. I do want to note that leverage increased modestly on a sequential basis due to the timing impact of trailing 12-month adjusted OIBDA, not a reflection of any change in the underlying business trajectory. Our $150 million revolver remains undrawn, and we have significant liquidity and financial flexibility to manage the business. Let me close with guidance. We are reaffirming our full year 2026 outlook across all metrics. OTT revenue growth versus 2025, low single-digit adjusted OIBDA growth versus 2025, $80 million to $120 million of unlevered free cash flow, leverage exiting the year at approximately 2.7x. We will remain disciplined in how we manage the business, and we are confident in our ability to deliver on these metrics. Finally, 2027 is now setting up to be a very significant year for margin expansion and improved free cash flow generation, given the restructuring benefit, owned originals ramping and continued content cost reductions. Now I'd like to turn the call back over to Nilay for Q&A.

Operator, Operator

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Go ahead, Nilay.

Nilay Shah, Investor Relations

I was going to say thanks, Scott. You can hand it over for Q&A. So we can start. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. The first question today comes from David Joyce with Seaport Research Partners.

David Joyce, Analyst, Seaport Research Partners

Regarding the Universal deal, can you size the portion of your available titles that represented? Is it all theatrical? Or is there episodic in there? And where would you be sourcing more content from? Would it have similar kind of aging? And what are the checks and balances that you've gone through to make sure you don't have over-exposed content again?

Jeffrey Hirsch, President and CEO

David, it's Jeff Hirsch. Thanks for the question. This is a really unique situation because of the size of the overlap of our subscriber base sitting on Amazon, which sits in the Pay-One B from Universal. And so what you're really seeing is we were paying Pay-Two prices for library performance. And so we've talked a lot about the data information we have on the business. And we've been able to use the data to kind of recreate and reinvest into other library titles that give us the same kind of performance so we can protect the revenue component of that while actually just putting money to the bottom line while we reinvest. And so it's a little bit of Moneyball where we actually look at various titles from library from across the industry to kind of recreate the performance that we had at a much better economic level.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Brent Penter with Raymond James.

Brent Penter, Analyst, Raymond James

First one for me. Could you talk a little bit more about last quarter, when you announced you're not reporting subs and are deemphasizing subscribers? How are you seeing that reflected in your results so far? Anything specific you can talk about in terms of customer lifetime value, churn, overall revenue, and how that's benefiting you?

Alison Hoffman, President, Starz Networks

Thank you so much for the question. I think we're really seeing the rewards of the pricing discipline that we put into the business. In this past quarter, we have seen churn reach an all-time low in our business. Basically, we're not bringing in low-value subscribers in the way that we were when we were in a quarterly sub chase. And so the health of the business is really there. Just another stat in terms of the last quarter that was really strong is engagement was really strong for the business. So we have a strong content quarter and we saw year-over-year engagement up about 8%. So I think we feel really good that this is the right way to approach and operate the business for the long-term revenue growth goals that we have as opposed to, again, orienting around a quarterly sub chase.

Brent Penter, Analyst, Raymond James

Okay. Great. That's great color. And then I also want to ask about the shareholder rights plan put into place in March after there was a big chunk of your shares that changed hands. Can you help us understand why that was put into place, why now? And then the rationale for the 1-year timeline expiring next March? And then, Jeff, is that at all related to the M&A possibility that you just laid out?

Jeffrey Hirsch, President and CEO

Yes. Look, great question. I think there's a few components. So one is a newly separated company. And as you've seen, the market cap has moved around a lot and run up. So we wanted, I think with the Board, we wanted to make sure that we had the ability and the time to kind of get the business rightsized and get value to the right place. And I think you're seeing that reflected in the stock and the market cap today. And so I think that the Board was really coalesced around making sure that we had the ability to get the business in the right place. Also, I think the Board is really also coalesced around our long-term vision for the business and how we can scale the business and wanted to make sure that we were laser-focused on that without any distraction. So we put that in place. It's a one-year term. And then next year, we'll come up probably for a shareholder vote, whether we extend it or not.

Brent Penter, Analyst, Raymond James

Okay. Okay. Got it. And then final question for me. With the Universal Pay-Two deal ending and you're moving up the 20% margin goal. As we think a couple of years out to 2028, does this mean maybe you could get even above that 20% goal as we look ahead? Or is this really more of a timing thing that it's just a matter of when you hit the 20%?

Jeffrey Hirsch, President and CEO

I think it's a combination of things. We knew we had the titles through calendar 2028, and as that was rolling off we had clear line of sight into what that margin profile would look like. As we work with Universal and move that forward, that will bring profitability into a shorter time frame. But there are multiple ways to grow margin in the business. As we continue to take more ownership of the network, de-age the slate, and enter 2028 and 2029 where the majority of our originals are owned by Starz and bring that entire portfolio over, there may be additional opportunities to continue growing margin as well.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from Vikram Kesavabhotla with Baird.

Vikram Kesavabhotla, Analyst, Baird

I think you mentioned in the prepared remarks that you guys raised price recently. It'd be great to hear more about what gave you the confidence to make that decision and perhaps any of the early feedback that you're seeing from customers who've seen that increase.

Alison Hoffman, President, Starz Networks

Yes, Vikram, thanks for the question. We executed our price increase on April 1, and we have done this before. We are really positioned very well as a complementary service. $11.99 is a great price point for the value that we offer and for the audiences that we serve. So far, the price increase is digesting really well throughout our business. It's going to expectations. We'll have more information as we get into the summer and it really sort of plays out through the business. But going to plan and going very well, we think that we're very, very well positioned at that price point.

Jeffrey Hirsch, President and CEO

I would also add that April is off to a really strong start even with the rate increase coming in April 1.

Vikram Kesavabhotla, Analyst, Baird

Okay. Great. And then separate from that, I know you've talked about in the past getting to half-year slate by 2027. It'd be great to get your updated thoughts on how you feel about that goal right now and maybe some of the puts and takes that will affect your ability to get there? And maybe just some more color on the progress you've made on some of the projects that you already have going.

Jeffrey Hirsch, President and CEO

Look, I've never been more excited about the pipeline we have. We just announced an untitled Black Rodeo show, which I think is going to be one of our biggest shows, and we're excited that production will begin in the fall. Fightland, our first owned original, will premiere July 31st; we released a lot of first-look footage and pictures yesterday, and it looks amazing. We have Kingmaker and Masquerade in development, and we've landed a couple of book series that we think could become big franchises. We have All 4s and have announced Plan B as our production partner there, and we're adding more writers to that. The pipeline has never been fuller or more exciting, and combined with the Pay-One Lionsgate deal, we're going to have a very strong content slate for the next one to three years. We're right on track to deliver on that 50% goal and I think we'll actually accelerate past it. Ultimately, the hope is to have most of the slate owned and controlled by Starz long term, and that's something we're laser-focused on.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from David Karnovsky with JPMorgan.

Douglas Samuel Wardlaw, Analyst, JPMorgan (on for David Karnovsky)

Doug Wardlaw on for David. I'm wondering now that you're out of this agreement with Universal, what's the criteria for the acquisition of titles you'll be looking for to properly lead to whether user acquisition or to the churn? And then separately, does this lead to more room for spend on original content?

Jeffrey Hirsch, President and CEO

That's a great question. We've developed a robust database of first-title streams and viewership for movies we've acquired over time from all the different studios. We have a good sense, especially for indie films, of the viewership and first-title streaming we can expect from different titles depending on their box office, age, characters, and storyline. That allows us to take a Moneyball approach to the portfolio to replace what we were getting from the Universal titles at much more of a library price. We had been paying pay-two rates, but those titles were performing more like library content because of how strongly they were watched on Amazon. So we have a clear view of what to acquire and at what price, and we can put a lot of the savings to the bottom line. You can see that in moving the guide to 20% in 2027, but we're also reinvesting in the business to protect the revenue side. We've been able to do both in a highly economic, positive way for the business.

Douglas Samuel Wardlaw, Analyst, JPMorgan (on for David Karnovsky)

Great. And then I guess, separately, you mentioned P-Valley is coming back at some point this year, and it's been a long gap. And I'm just wondering what your data kind of says about audience reengagement for shows that have hiatuses that long? And does that kind of lead to more marketing spend to kind of get some of those viewers back that may have been gone?

Jeffrey Hirsch, President and CEO

It's a great question. I think with P-Valley specifically, and we've seen this with other shows that have had longer breaks like Outlander, the fan bases are so obsessed with these shows that they've been continually looking for them and coming back to the network. So I actually think the moment we bring P-Valley back, the obsessiveness and craziness of the fan base will get people there. We also have the ability within the app to notify customers, which is a zero-cost play for us. We have a lot of different marketing tools that are not economically expensive to bring them back. Outlander is a great example: that fan base has created an off-season community and they're online every day wondering when the show is coming back. I think P-Valley brings that same kind of intensity, and I expect it to be a wonderful return to the network with a massive gain in both subscribers and viewership when it gets back on the air.

Operator, Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Nilay Shah for any closing remarks.

Nilay Shah, Investor Relations

Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone. Please refer to the News and Events tab under the Investor Relations section of our website for a discussion of certain non-GAAP forward-looking measures discussed on this call. Thanks, everyone.

Operator, Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.