Paramount Skydance - Q4 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good afternoon. My name is Nadia, I'll be the conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to Paramount's Q4 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines have been muted to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. I would now like to turn the call over to Kevin Creighton, Paramount's EVP of Investor Relations. You may now begin.

Kevin Creighton (EVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations)

Good afternoon. Thank you for taking the time to join us for the Paramount fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. I'm Kevin Creighton, EVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations. Joining me today is our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, David Ellison, our President, Jeff Shell, our Chief Financial Officer, Dennis Cinelli, and our Chief Strategy and Operating Officer, Andy Gordon. As a reminder, we will be making forward-looking statements today that involve risks and uncertainties. Our remarks will also include non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures can be found in our earnings letter or in our trending schedules, which contain supplemental information. These can be found on our investor relations website. I'll now turn it over to David for a few brief remarks before we take analyst questions.

David Ellison (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Kevin, and good afternoon, everyone. As you saw in our Q4 results and in the most recent shareholder letter, we ended the fiscal year with a strong first full quarter under our leadership team and positive momentum heading into 2026, meeting or exceeding guidance for the quarter that we laid out in our Q3 letter. It's been a productive six-plus months since the launch of the new Paramount, and we are pleased with the progress made in a relatively short time. Our North Star priorities continue to guide everything we do, and we're confident we are on the right trajectory and are excited about the opportunities ahead. Before we get to your questions, I did want to take a moment to acknowledge Andy Warren's tenure as our interim CFO.

Andy is widely respected across our organization and the industry, and we are truly fortunate to have had his leadership during this important period. We're incredibly grateful for everything he's done to help position the company for success and appreciate his continued partnership as a strategic advisor. I also want to officially welcome Dennis Cinelli. He brings significant financial and operational experience, having held senior roles at GE, Uber, and Scale AI, where he served most recently as CFO. He was also briefly a member of our board of directors before assuming his current role. We're thrilled that he's joined our leadership team and look forward to you getting to know him better going forward. I'll briefly address our proposal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.

On Monday, we submitted a revised bid of $31 per share, all cash. We look forward to continuing to engage with their leadership team and board. While we appreciate that this is obviously something you all have questions about, we won't be commenting further during today's call. With that, I'll turn it back over to Kevin for your questions.

Kevin Creighton (EVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations)

All right. Thank you, David and Nadia. We'll go ahead and open it up for questions. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Great. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to remove your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure to unmute yourself locally. We ask you please limit yourselves to one question. The first question goes to Peter Supino of Wolfe Research. Peter, please go ahead.

Peter Supino (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Hi, good morning. I wonder if you could comment on your initial experience as the home of UFC on your streaming service, and maybe tie those comments more broadly to your latest thinking on the viability of being something for everyone, every day. I think that's your stated strategy in streaming, and obviously it's an extremely tall, competitive order, and I just wondered kind of what you've learned in the last six months of owning the asset that makes you more or less confident in that objective. Thank you.

David Ellison (Chairman and CEO)

No, absolutely, and really appreciate the question. First, we couldn't be more thrilled about the way the UFC partnership has started. UFC 324 was really a phenomenal start for us. We reached approximately 7 million households across the U.S. and Latin America, and was also the platform's largest exclusive live event to date. We've also seen the advertising demand for UFC be strong, and overall, the partnership has really started ahead of expectations. In addition to that, we've really seen UFC fans engage with the vast others of our content offering. They're watching Landman, they're watching other series, so we're really seeing that flywheel work for us. We also are really seeing it work well with Zuffa Boxing.

We really believe in the theory of actually owning combat sports, having that entire category as a home on Paramount+ is something that's been working really well for us to date. More broadly, we've greenlit our 11 original series since we took over six months ago, and are really seeing strong, basically growth in our streaming service, you know, up over 17% year to date on Paramount+. From that standpoint, we're really seeing that momentum continue and feel really good about the start to the partnership with UFC and Dana White.

Kevin Creighton (EVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations)

Is there anything we wanna add on sort of the last six months in streaming?

Jeff Shell (President)

Yeah. you know, first of all, I would just add to the UFC comments that David just made, that, you know, we're really at the very beginning of this, of this partnership, and we're going to experiment a lot. The beauty of having this sport exclusively and being the exclusive partners of the UFC is we can try lots of stuff. Our upcoming fight in March seventh is gonna be, you know, partially on CBS, and we look forward to lots of, lots of experimentation as we grow, you know, as we grow the, you know, brand. I think the first six months on streaming have gone really well. We've seen accelerating growth in Paramount+, doing better and better every quarter.

The key now is to get ongoing engagement and the content that I'm sure we're going to talk about later that we have coming is pretty exciting for doing that. From a kind of financial perspective, the ad revenue has been much more promising than we expected, and is really the key now is driving that engagement and that usage because we can monetize it at Paramount+. We're feeling pretty good about the momentum we have at streaming so far.

Peter Supino (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Great.

Kevin Creighton (EVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations)

Nadia, next question, please. Thanks, Peter.

Operator (participant)

The next question goes to John Hodulik of UBS. John, please go ahead.

John Hodulik (Media and Telecom Analyst)

great. Thanks, guys. Jeff, maybe for you, a follow-up on the comments on DTC. You guys guided to better profitability next year, you know, against some slightly higher subs. What are you seeing in terms of ARPU? There seem to be some moving parts with, you know, exiting the hard bundles, but some price increases, you know, that translates to better revenue growth. Then on the cost side, just aggregate sort of that commentary on leading to better DTC results. Thanks.

Jeff Shell (President)

Yeah. Thanks, John. I'm going to actually pass over to Dennis for this one.

Dennis Cinelli (CFO)

Yeah. Hi, John. Good to meet you, and I'm excited to be here. Thanks, everybody. I think it's, you know, John, is it helpful probably for us to just frame our guidance overall, which a big part of that is DTC. As we put out, you know, overall, we expect revenue this year of $30 billion, up 4% year-on-year. DTC is going to be the driver of that. We expect DTC to continue to accelerate growth year-on-year-on-year. You know, growth will accelerate in 2026 versus 2025. You know, the drivers of that is a couple of things. We continue to see subscriber growth, what we're calling underlying, healthy subscriber growth, accelerate in 2026.

This will result in better ARPU from a mix shift, as well as we realize the price increases in Q1. As we previously mentioned, as we sort of mentioned, and I'm going to call this out, we're making this deliberate decision to exit from uneconomic hard bundles. You'll see that in our subscriber growth this year. If you take those underlying exits out, you know, we will continue to see net adds grow year-on-year. Just to give you a call out, those uneconomic hard bundles represented less than 2% of Paramount+ revenue in 2025. Coupled with the subscriber growth, we also expect DTC ad revenue to grow this year.

We've been talking a lot about how we're investing in programming to drive better engagement, better ad tech, as well as the team there that Jeff alluded to. We expect to meaningfully recover DTC ad growth in the year. At the same time, back to your question, how that comes together, we are investing in the business, but we expect DTC profitability to improve year-on-year as we both grow revenue and, you know, manage our investments. You know, it's worth, you know, just taking a step back maybe and talking about the rest of the business. DTC will be the growth driver, but as we think about the rest of the portfolio we have, right?

You know, TV media, we expect to see some declines in revenue, you know, mostly in line with the industry, you know, headwinds around pay TV, that we expect our advertising revenue to decline, to be more moderate as we execute overall, and better ad sales. We feel really good about the upfronts coming up this year. We are also have tailwinds from political spending in 2026. One thing to call out, we do offset, you know, some of the we do have some impact from our sale of Telefe and Chilevisión.

In TV media overall, I just want to call out, you know, we've been really impressed with the team, managing that business in, you know, while the revenues will decline, we expect overall profitability in that business to be stable on both a profit dollars and a margin basis. The other thing is the studios, right? Studios, we do expect theatrical revenue to decline. I think we've been very clear overall that we're in a real rebuild phase of that business. As we execute that rebuild, we'll see some of that come through in the 26 slate, but mostly that will come through in future years. Even with theatrical revenue dropping down, we do expect better cost management as well as, benefits from our licensing deals to drive studio profitability up.

If you put this together, you know, overall, we're reaffirming guidance for the year on both on revenue as well as profit. Adjusted EBITDA outlook of $3.8 billion. That excludes our $300 million of stock-based compensation, but, you know, is improving year-on-year as driven by both the top line and as we realize our synergies. You know, we've put out there, we will expect to realize 3 billion+ of our synergies. This is, this includes both, you know, across our entire business. You know, we expect to sort of, you know, profitability to improve in DTC and our new studio segment, still margins in TV media.

I think the last question probably is just like, what does it look like beyond 2026? You know, I think without giving specific guidance, we just want to make sure we're here talking about how, you know, the team around the table, David, on down, we're owner-operators. We're investing for long-term value creation, and we expect that to show through over the next many years.

Kevin Creighton (EVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations)

Thank you, Dennis. Nadia, next question, please.

Operator (participant)

The next question goes to Steven Cahall of Wells Fargo. Steven, please go ahead.

Steven Cahall (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Thank you. First, just wanted to ask if you've had any conversations yet with the NFL. It's a big topic for investors, especially with you and Fox having so many games on Sunday. As you're thinking about where that could go in the future, I was wondering if there's any potential for the games on Paramount+, which I think are currently geo-fenced.

to be available sort of nationwide within that, rather than only being on Sunday Ticket. It seems like you've got some opportunities, maybe as well as some risks with the NFL renewal. We'd love to know how you're thinking about that. Just on the outlook for 2026 and maybe 2027, if we think about free cash flow, I think you've said before that you're committed to investment grade with all three rating agencies. I think that implies that on a total basis, including restructuring, you'd be free cash flow positive by next year. Just wondering if I'm thinking about that one correctly. Thank you.

Jeff Shell (President)

Thanks, Steve. This is Jeff. I'll take the first and then pass it over to Andy for the second. you know, you asked, have we talked to the NFL? We talk to the NFL almost daily. We have a great relationship with the NFL. we were the very first NFL broadcaster way back when it started, and it's been, you know, nearly a century of relationship. during that century, this past year was our most watched year ever. you know, everything clicked this last year for us, with the most viewership, the biggest watched game, the biggest watched window, that 4:25 window nationally for CBS. everything is really going well with the partnership, and we feel very good about them, and I think they feel very good about us.

We're not particularly concerned. Obviously, you know, it's been widely publicized that there is a renewal discussion coming up. We don't talk about individual negotiations, but suffice it to say, we feel pretty confident we're gonna be in business with the NFL for a long time, and we have properly accounted for what we expect to be whatever impact of that negotiation in our kind of internal forecast going forward. Let me just one thing about the geofencing, let's talk about that for a second.

One of the unique things about our relationship with the NFL, and I would actually say it's probably similar to Fox's relationship with the NFL, is the anchor of their flywheel is really their reach, and the anchor of their reach is really the reach of both CBS and Fox on Sunday afternoons. The way we get the NFL that reach, which has really helped contribute for both of our benefit to the success of the NFL, is by our vast array of both owned and operated stations, of which we have 28, and affiliates. It's important that those games get regionalized and that we aggregate that viewership and maximize the viewership in each market for the best game, both for us and Fox.

That accrues to the benefit of the NFL and to us, and really maximizes the reach on any given Sunday. I don't think we're gonna be doing anything with Paramount+, that's any different, and I don't think that, you know, Fox is gonna be doing anything different than we are doing on linear, which is to maximize that reach and that regionalization of that window, which I think works for all of us. Maybe pass it over to Andy for the.

Andy Gordon (CSO and COO)

Yeah, sure.

Jeff Shell (President)

[crosstalk].

Andy Gordon (CSO and COO)

Hi, Steven, and thanks for the second question. Let me take the investment grade part first, and obviously, it's interrelated with free cash flow conversion. As we told you in the last quarter, we are absolutely committed to getting to investment-grade credit metrics. This is, of course, relative to our standalone position, and we expect to hit those in 2027. With regard to free cash flow, I just point out that notwithstanding the fact we paid down over $300 million of debt in the first quarter, and in addition, have $800 million of restructuring charges. You take the restructuring charges out, we're actually hitting 5% free cash flow conversion this year, which of course, is not where we want to be.

As we sort of accelerate that into 2027 and the out years, we expect to get back to industry norms and hopefully exceed that. That's certainly part of our strategic plan. I would say there's no real change from that and what we talked about in November.

Kevin Creighton (EVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations)

All right, great. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. Nadia, next question, please.

Operator (participant)

The next question goes to Robert Fishman of MoffettNathanson. Robert, please go ahead.

Robert Fishman (Senior Research Analyst and Managing Director)

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. When you think about your growth ahead, can you talk about how critical to creating long-term shareholder value to reinvigorate and build upon your core franchises and IP? If you can, comment how Warner Bros. and HBO IP would help accelerate that growth over the next three to five years, either for a standalone Paramount+ or a combined platform with HBO Max. On a related note, just how do we think about overall content spending, again, either standalone or with Warner Bros., especially factoring in the sports and the long-term strategy to grow that profit and cash flow? Thank you.

Jeff Shell (President)

Yeah, thanks, Robert, for the question. We won't be answering anything related to Warner, as David mentioned in his opening remarks. Just a reminder for everyone else on the line, we'll go ahead and, you know, how do we think about sort of franchise and long-term value, as we mentioned in the letter?

David Ellison (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, no, absolutely. I'll speak to that. You know, look, as we're the largest shareholder of the Class Bs, we really approach everything through the lens of how do we create long-term, basically, shareholder value, which really means, you know, we're long-term investors, we're long-term owner-operators, and we really have a long-term horizon in terms of how we're approaching this.

If you step back across all of our businesses, we're actually really pleased about the investments that we're making, really going back to our North Star priorities. We've talked about streaming. I'll start in the studio segment. You know, as Dennis said, you know, we inherited a slate that, you know, has underperformed. We're gonna see, you know, significant improvement in the profitability of the film slate this year. I think if you really look at how we are doubling down on our franchises and really reinvigorating them and reinvesting in them, which is something that, you know, we did in partnership when we were, you know, obviously when I ran Skydance. You know, to date, in the little over six months that we've been here, you know, we've actually we're gonna release 16 movies this year.

Versus the eight films that we inherited. We're really gonna be at a steady state of over 15 movies per year. We've greenlit 11 movies, basically since we've been here in the first six months, including films like A Quiet Place and Sonic, which is really us doubling down on our franchises. Taylor Sheridan and Peter Berg are hard at work at Call of Duty, which we're really excited about. You know, we have Scream opening this weekend. When, you know, again, going to Paramount+, in addition to the investments that, you know, we've obviously made in the UFC and sports, you know, we've actually greenlit 11 original series on top of the incredible slate that we're fortunate enough to step into.

We're also investing significantly in the improved product experience on both P+ and Pluto. Consumers are gonna continue to get more incredible content they love and an overall better user experience, which we think will really position ourselves well for growth into the future. When you step back and look at our linear, really anchored by CBS, you know, we had eight of the top 10 shows on broadcast, the number one show in Tracker, the number one news show in Sheriff Country, the number one news program in 60 Minutes. We really are seeing strong demand for our content across our portfolios, and we're only seeing that accelerate going forward.

You know, it's been six months, but we really do feel good about the work the team has really done to date, and you can expect that to accelerate into the future quickly.

Robert Fishman (Senior Research Analyst and Managing Director)

How do we think about the content spend for Paramount overall?

David Ellison (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. So overall content spend, sorry, I wanna ensure that. We talked about, you know, we've obviously increased our content spend, as we announced last quarter, by $1.5 billion, you know, which is really going towards all the things that I talked about, which is really scaling our film slate, scaling our original series, investing more into sports. We do believe that that will create long-term shareholder value. You know, as because, again, like, you know, it's, it is a priority for us to make sure that we can win in the content space, make sure that we are the most technologically capable media company, and really, have the appropriate operational efficiencies across the company.

That's what really drives all the decisions here, and I think we're off to a really strong start in the first six months.

Kevin Creighton (EVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations)

Thank you, David. Nadia, next question, please.

Operator (participant)

The next question goes to Ric Prentiss of Raymond James. Ric, please go ahead.

Ric Prentiss (Managing Director)

Thanks. Good afternoon. yeah, question. In the letter, you talk about leveraging your IP across the ecosystem. Give us some concrete examples of what you hope to achieve going across film, television, streaming, live experiences, publishing, consumer products, and how we might see that. If you were to benchmark yourself against the peer group, how do you think you are doing as far as monetizing that IP?

David Ellison (Chairman and CEO)

It's a great question, and I'll point to a couple things. Like, one, I'll use Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as obviously the most recent example of really. You know, we're obviously, we have two films that we're obviously making. You know, obviously, in the Turtles landscape, we have series, and we also have consumer products. huge compliment to obviously Josh, who came to us from Mattel, who in the first month of basically being at Paramount, created the most significant consumer products partnership in the history of the company. Over 5x would have been done to date, which I think is kind of, you know, a great example in this quarter of really how we're maximizing our IP across the flywheel that we've created.

One of the other things, if we take a step back, I think that we're really, we're really proud of is, you know, really the Paramount One initiative that we've launched really as a marketing platform. The UFC is one of the first things that we obviously ran through that, where we really activated all of our linear channels, our direct-to-consumer platforms, and really the entire ecosystem to deliver billions of impressions, you know, which really helped drive that launch of UFC 324. Which again, came in, ahead of our expectations, you know, and really helped us create the largest live event in the history of Paramount+.

You're gonna see us activating that Paramount One ecosystem across a lot of our tentpole franchises going forward, across our series launches, as we really integrate this business to operate as one company. We're seeing that work incredibly well in the first couple of months, and I just have to really give a tremendous amount of credit to the team that have really been, you know, breaking down silos and operating as one business. The results are incredibly promising. We're, you know, we're still in the beginning, six months in, but we're really excited about the trajectory.

Kevin Creighton (EVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations)

Great. Thanks. Nadia, we'll go ahead and jump to the next question, please.

Operator (participant)

The next question goes to Kutgun Maral of Evercore ISI. Kutgun, please go ahead.

Kutgun Maral (Media, Cable and Telecom Equity Research)

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. A few on AI, if I could. You know, first, Gen AI is clearly progressing quickly and dramatically. Short-form clips don't threaten the core of your studios today, but future-length personalized stories could become feasible. How are you positioning the company for that evolution? Do you expect content creation to become commoditized, or do brands and IP become more valuable in this world? At a high level with AI, maybe you could talk about your guiding principles on licensing and any guardrails. Finally, one of your peers recently outlined a path to bring AI-generated short clips into its streaming service. Do you see a future where AI-enabled short form, user-generated, or prompted content lives inside Paramount+? Thanks.

David Ellison (Chairman and CEO)

It's a great question, and first, look, I'll kind of step back to where I really say, like, one of our core goals is to become the most technologically capable media company. You know, there's no question that AI is gonna be a significant transformation across our industry and others. I wanna say that, you know, first and foremost, we are really a home for storytellers, and we are a content company first. We really view artificial intelligence as an unbelievable tool for artists that will be a significant unlock on creativity.

With that said, we are also big believers that, you know, when you really go back to 1992, when I believe it was James Cameron in Digital Domain, when they basically did away with opticals and actually started getting into digital composites, was really the beginning of the kind of software-based CPU pipelines that we've all been iterating off of, you know, the last several decades. I think there's no question that we're at one of those inflection points where, you know, model-driven GPU pipelines are gonna get deployed across the business. Again, we really view that as a tool for artists to be able to unlock creativity.

When you look at some of the things we're doing internally in terms of how we're investing, you know, when you look at the engineers that we obviously have at the company currently, you can expect us to kind of 10x the size of the headcount that we are basically, investing towards this. Really wanna be in a position where we can be a leader, in the industry in terms of how this transformation is shaped. To your question about, you know, do I think it'll be commoditized? The answer is no. I don't think there's anything that's gonna replace artists. I don't think there's anything that's gonna replace the creativity of original storytelling.

I would actually point towards, you know, when you look at the value of intellectual property, whether it was sora on their launch or whether it was Seedance, I think you saw us obviously defend our IP against both of those things. The fact that there was so much engagement around the characters and intellectual property, you know, that audiences love, I think speaks to the value of that intellectual property. You know, and we are in a unique position to be able to take advantage of that.

There's nothing I'm really in a position that I can fully elaborate on further, but again, I think when you look at the power of IP enabled by AI, is gonna be something that is, you know, I think, a, a tailwind for us as a company, and we're excited to help kind of be key drivers of that innovation.

Kevin Creighton (EVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations)

All right, thanks for the question, Kutgun. Nadia, we can go ahead and jump to the next question, please.

Operator (participant)

The next question goes to Michael Morris of Guggenheim. Michael, please go ahead.

Michael Morris (Senior Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you. Good afternoon, guys. I wanted to ask about the studio first. Dennis, I think you mentioned an expected decline in theatrical revenue in 2026. I'm hoping you can reconcile that with the significant increase that you're expecting in the number of titles being released. As you think about that decline, does that pertain to the studio business overall, or is it only the theatrical component and you expect growth in licensing? If I could, just on the Pluto headwinds that you cited, the trend there seems to be well below the CTV industry overall. Is this a business that you expect to turn around as a growth driver, or is this maybe not core to the future as you see it? Thank you.

Dennis Cinelli (CFO)

Thanks, Michael. Yeah, let me take the first part, then hand over to David. On the studio business overall, we will see growth overall on the studio business on a revenue basis. That will be driven primarily by the licensing and also combining Skydance into that segment. What I was talking about is theatrical, right? In theatrical, we are increasing the number of films, we are comping last year, which was a big output in Mission: Impossible. That's what will drive the theatrical decline year on year for 2026. Then the second part of your question, as we think about Pluto, I mean, I think what you'll see is in the DTC segment, right, in Q4, we grew 10% year on year.

Paramount+ was up 17%. Non-Paramount+ was down 16%. As we call out, that's primarily driven by Pluto, and it's primarily driven by the monetization of Pluto. I think what we should call out is actually Pluto engagement is up. monthly active users, the engagement of those users is actually up, and so what we're facing is a monetization headwind, which we are addressing, and we addressed that in our guidance. I think it's worth passing over to David to talk overall about how we think about Pluto, and our FAST strategy.

David Ellison (Chairman and CEO)

I wanna expand on what Dennis said on the studio side. You know, again, we stepped into last year, a film slate that had underperformed. We have, you know, scaled, you know, from eight movies to 16 releases this year, and it's gonna be significantly more profitable. When you really think about getting our core franchises back online, you don't really see that start to occur until 2027, just because of what the life cycle is of obviously making a tentpole. You know, it's two years to basically from beginning to release at the earliest. You know, We're making significant improvements in profitability across our film slate this year.

In 2027, when you start seeing films like A Quiet Place and Sonic, you know, Call of Duty, several of our other franchises that basically will be releasing in 2027, 2028 and beyond, you will see our box office numbers increase, you will see profitability increase. You know, there is a two-year life cycle, kind of minimum to those big event films. I actually think the team has done an exceptional job, you know, putting us in a good position for this year, for the level of growth that we're gonna have across our theatrical slate, you will see that accelerate significantly into 2027. As Dennis said, really looking at Pluto, stepping back, I am a big believer in the FAST space.

I think when you really look at globally, FAST is something that is only going to grow in importance. When you look at the signs that are also really encouraging on Pluto, is we are seeing engagement grow. The headwind we're facing is really monetization, and we're doing several things to correct that. While, you know, Pluto has always been a leader in the FAST space, it's a profitable platform. It was, from our perspective, underinvested in by the previous owners and managers, both in a content standpoint as well as from a product standpoint. You know, and we've also brought in, you know, obviously, new leadership to help us on the advertising side.

We have new leadership on the DTC side that are really working really well hand in hand to make sure that we improve the product and improve the monetization. really, our overall streaming convergence that we talked about in our last earnings call, where we had really three separate stacks that were running on multiple clouds, all independent of one another. that convergence obviously will be done in the coming quarters, and you will see continued product improvement to both Pluto and P+. With that, we'll see the monetization curve correct, and we'll really start seeing better monetization, better growth, and more in line with peers, with expectations to be above.

Kevin Creighton (EVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations)

Thank you, David. All right, Nadia, we'll go ahead and turn it back over to you, please.

Operator (participant)

Great, thank you. The final question goes to Bryan Kraft of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Bryan Kraft (Lead Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. First, on UFC, I know you had cited 7 million MAUs. I was curious as to whether you can give us some color on the number of unique viewers that you had, just given that you have 79 million subs. Trying to understand what the percentage of those subscribers overall is that are engaging with UFC at some level. Secondly, I was wondering if you could talk about what you've been seeing, since you completed the acquisition, both in churn and CAC. How are those trending? How much opportunity do you see for improvement in both of those key metrics over the next one or two years? How critical is it to improve either or both of those to the long-term economic success of the streaming business? Thank you.

David Ellison (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, no, absolutely. Look, I wanna reiterate, we're incredibly happy with the way our partnership with the UFC has started. You know, when it goes to the 7 million households across U.S. and Latin America, you know, that was above our expectation. Again, it is the largest exclusive sporting event that we've had, obviously, in Paramount+ history. We are seeing that momentum continue. In terms of basically, you know, churn, we are seeing that trend the right direction. I still think there's areas for us to be able to continue to improve, which is why you're seeing us invest the way that we are, both in content as well as in the product.

We know at 79 million global subscribers, there's a lot of opportunity for growth ahead of us. You know, when you look at the investments that we're making, again, in the first 6 months, you know, green lighting 11 original series, as well as the work that Dane Glasgow and his team are really doing to significantly improve the product, I think you'll see us improve in all of those metrics going forward. Obviously, we believe those investments will significantly yield long-term shareholder value. We're pleased about the work to date, but you're only gonna see that improve going forward into the future. I mean, Jeff, anything you want to add to that?

Jeff Shell (President)

No, I just think what I would say is there's a seasonality aspect to the business, too. Churn is something that we traditionally saw at Paramount+ really spike up in the summer after The Masters and kinda come back down with the NFL. Two of the things we've talked about today, that David's talked about, both the UFC and its year-round programming, combined with the increased movie slate, which then pays dividends as it goes to Paramount+ year-round, I think that's gonna have a significant impact to churn in addition to the other factors that David just talked about.

Dennis Cinelli (CFO)

Bryan, just jumping in. This is Dennis. One thing to correct, the status, 7 million households that engage in UFC 324.

Kevin Creighton (EVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations)

Great. Thank you, team. Thank you all for joining the call today. We appreciate it. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This now concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining, and you may now disconnect your lines.