Paramount Skydance (NASDAQ:PSKY) held its first-quarter earnings conference call on Monday. Below is the complete transcript from the call.
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View the webcast at https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/r43swb5e/
Summary
Paramount Skydance reported strong Q1 2026 results, highlighting nearly doubling their film slate and achieving financial goals, driven by top creative talent and operational transformation.
The company is focused on integrating platforms and leveraging AI for efficiency, with significant updates to its streaming services expected by mid-2026.
Paramount Skydance is progressing on a major transaction with Warner Bros. Discovery, aiming to finalize by September 2026, enhancing their competitive position in global media and entertainment.
UFC partnership has exceeded expectations, with significant viewer engagement and contribution to advertising revenue, attracting a younger audience.
Management emphasized a strategic focus on quality content and technology investments, while maintaining flexibility with content licensing, including partnerships with platforms like Netflix and Prime Video.
Full Transcript
Krista (Conference Operator)
Good afternoon. My name is Krista and I’ll be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to Paramount’s first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines have been muted to prevent any background noise. After the speaker’s remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press Star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. And if you’d like to withdraw your question, please press star one again. I would now like to turn the call over to Kevin Crichton, Paramount’s EVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations. You may now begin your conference call.
Kevin Creighton
Good afternoon and thank you for taking the time to join us for the Paramount Q1 2026 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 Chief Financial Officer Dennis Janelli, 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.
David Ellison (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)
I’ll now turn it over to David Ellison for a few brief remarks before we take analyst questions. Thanks Kevin and good afternoon everyone. As you’ve seen in our first quarter results and most recent shareholder letter, we’re off to a strong start in our first full year as Paramount Skydance. The the progress we’ve made in just nine months is a testament to the amazing team we’ve assembled that has worked tirelessly and with great conviction to deliver on all areas of our business. We are executing deliberately against our priorities and seeing tangible results, attracting top creative talent, nearly doubling our film slate, delivering shows audiences love and green lighting dozens of new and returning series while achieving our financial goals. At the same time, we are transforming how we operate, unifying platforms, data and workflows and embedding advanced technology to drive efficiency, better serve our partners and elevate the overall consumer experience across the business. We are getting things done and it’s translating into real momentum. As a storytelling company, our top priority is and always will be delivering great films and television series from the world’s leading creators that resonate with broad global audiences. Recent highlights include Scream 7, which became the highest grossing installment in the franchise’s 30 year history, Landman, now the most watched series in Paramount Plus history and the continued strength of CBS, which has 13 of the top 20 primetime series, including all four of the top new series, an achievement no broadcast network has matched since the early 1990s on streaming and sports engagement remains strong with more than 10 million households watching over 100 million hours of UFC programming on Paramount Plus and CBS Sports delivering the most watched final round of the Masters in over a decade. These are just a few examples of the progress and growth taking place company wide. As I mentioned, we are also making meaningful strides improving our products to deliver more dynamic personalized experiences and superior monetization. New features such as enhanced mobile experiences, short form video and more advanced recommendations are helping us to better serve consumers. We’re also leveraging AI powered capabilities across the businesses including our Agentic Data Warehouse and Precision Plus our targeted and optimization platform, to move faster and operate with greater effectiveness and support of our advertising partners. While there is still significant work ahead, we remain confident in our strategy and the trajectory we are on. Finally, we continue to make steady progress towards completing the Warner Bros. Discovery transaction, which we believe will accelerate our transformation, strengthen our competitive position and enhance our ability to help shape the next era of entertainment. To date we have satisfied our US HSR obligations and there are no statutory impediments remaining and we continue to advance through European and other international regulatory approvals, several of which have already been secured. Earlier in April, we announced a broad syndication of the PIPE equity commitments to strategic investors, underscoring continued investor confidence, secured $10 billion in permanent financing and syndicated the remaining $49 billion of our bridge to a group of leading banks and institutional lenders. Additionally, on April 23, WBD shareholders voted to approve the transaction. We’re pleased with the momentum and will continue to take the necessary steps to bring this deal to completion. At every stage we remain guided by our strong conviction that the combination of these two iconic companies and their extraordinary teams will create a leading global media and entertainment company powered by storytelling and accelerated by technology that strengthens competition, better, serves the creative community and delivers even more compelling stories to audiences worldwide. We’re excited for all that’s ahead and look forward to the opportunities it will create. And with that, I’ll turn it back over to Kevin for your questions.
Kevin Creighton
Thanks David. Just a quick note before we open the line giving the pending transaction for WBD. We won’t be taking questions on the deal today beyond what we wrote in the shareholder letters. With that, Krista, we’ll go ahead and open up the line.
Krista (Conference Operator)
Please. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star one on your Telephone keypad. To withdraw your question again, press Star one. We do ask that you limit yourself to one question. For any additional questions, please re queue. And your first question comes from Sean Difley with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Sean Difley (Equity Analyst)
Great. Thanks very much. I was hoping you could comment on business transformation early learnings as you converge your tech stacks between Paramount plus and Pluto and any things that you could apply to a larger asset base and then broadly how you see AI transforming the business. You mentioned on the ad tech front, but anything else that you think is notable to call out?
Andy Gordon (Chief Strategy and Operating Officer)
Yeah, sure. No, no, absolutely. So what I would say in terms of early learnings is really our ability to execute and move quickly in regards to the transformation. We’re on track, as we discussed previously, to really consolidate our three streaming services into one unified platform by really the middle of this year. Those learnings are going to be crucial as we get into basically the transaction with WBD. I think if you look at our ability to execute on our cost saves and efficiencies, we’ve had great learnings there and I think we’ve been delivering on what we said we were going to do regarding plan. So I do believe that what we’ve been executing at Paramount will be a good kind of accelerant in learning for everything we’re doing. WBD getting more specific into that. As Kevin said, we’re going to kind of stay a little bit away from the transaction today given we’re obviously still in the middle of the process. I’ll turn it over to Andy if there’s anything you want to add to that. Yeah, I would just say what we’re learning also is as we integrate BET plus Pluto and Paramount into one tech stack, it’s going to accelerate our ability to do the same when we close WBD and in particular when you see the consumer product that comes out this summer, I think you’ll be pretty pleased about how they all function together and create a better experience both for the free consumers on the fast channel business of Pluto, but also on the paid subscription businesses of Paramount both ad-supported and ad-free. So we’re pretty excited about what we’re doing and look to dive into more specifics on in terms of what we’re seeing on the platforms we’re operating. As we said, we remain on track for convergence. That obviously has significant benefits across personalizations and recommendations. You know, on the front end, we’re modernizing the consumer facing technology to create more dynamic personalized experiences. As of April, you’re able to see obviously short form video Clips, servicing trailers, sports highlights and library content in a curated, more personalized feed. We’re working on enhanced personalization across discovery including AI driven artwork. We’re also focusing on building other mobile optimized experience like live stats for live sports. All of these are really designed to deepen engagement across the platform for Pluto. Basically this summer Pluto is going to get the most significant update really since the inception of the platform. Other areas you’re really seeing us really utilize technology is across our tech and product org. Approximately 80% of our engineering organization is using code assisted technology which is driving meaningful production gains and really cutting approval times by more than in half. So again it’s really accelerating how we work across the business and these investments all support our long term D2C growth and are foundational to where we’re taking the business. And again, these are all great learnings that will prepare us for the transaction at the end of the third quarter. The only thing I’d add around AI transformation is we’re spinning up pods to go after AI based workflows in the back office. So think finance, HR operational functions and we’re really enabling both on the Paramount side and we think this sets us up for the combination people to go after AI based workflows and efficiency in the back office and we see that’s going to be a real benefit and so we’re doing that today with the teams that David talked about and that will set us up well in the future as well. Yeah, just one more thing to add is on Oracle Fusion, our ERP system, we made a major milestone in the first quarter with the remainder of that transformation to the Oracle Fusion system for Paramount standalone by early 27. So again that puts us in a much better spot as part of the closing of Warner Bros. Discovery as well.
Kevin Creighton
Great. Thanks Sean. Appreciate the question.
Jessica Reif Uhrlich (Equity Analyst)
Krista. Next question …
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