Warner Bros. Discovery misses on earnings, leadership remains optimistic
Welcome back. Despite yesterday's lackluster quarterly results, Warner Brothers' Discovery leadership they remain optimistic about the media giant's future. After a rocky year of restructuring, CEO David Zasloff hailed 2023 as quote, a year of building. Yahu finances, Alec and Al joins us to discuss how and if the company can survive and thrive in the months ahead. Can they do it? Thrive that is. That is a big question. And you're right, Jared.
This was a very interesting report. It's all misses across the board. But as you said, a clear focus that 2023 will be the year of building CEO David Zasloff. He stressed that the current strategy it's working, that they are finally operating as one company. And there are several things that WBD is going to be focusing on in the years ahead. Number one being its intellectual property. That means more franchises, more general entertainment content, a bigger focus on the DC universe.
And there are several films that are planned for that in the coming years, like the Batman, Superman, the flash that slated for release in June. Now in addition to that, Zasloff also revealed plans to produce multiple Lord of the Rings films. That got a lot of traction on Twitter. And then outside of movies, there's also a bigger emphasis on CNN, that news network going through a bit of a rebrand right now. There's been rumors that it could potentially be up for sale, but Zasloff essentially shut that down saying it's very important that they get CNN right. And he wants to continue to focus on bringing more balanced voices into that programming. And then finally, video games.
This is an interesting category here for WBD, but one that does seem to be working Hogwarts Legacy that reached 850 million in global sales on 12 million units in the first two weeks post launch. And that's the best global launch for WBD. So interesting to see those diversified revenue streams. We heard from Laura Martin from Needham this morning. She said it sort of mirrors Disney's strategy in a lot of ways. And that has a lot of potential to unlock value over the long term. And Warner Brothers did say that they are targeting four billion in cost saving synergies over the next two years.
And that's up from the previous 3.5 billion. So a lot of optimism on the street right now. Yeah, let's talk a little bit more about the streaming strategy because Warner Brothers discovered his plans to release a combo HBO Max Discovery Plus platform sometime this year. Do we get any more info on that in the call? We know it's coming in the spring. We don't know exactly the launch date or the pricing, but there is going to be a press event on April 12th. We will get all of those details.
Now, Zazov also confirmed previous reports that there will be a Discovery Plus standalone service in addition to that combo service. And overall, analysts were very interested on this call when it came to this new offering. There were a lot of questions that were asked there, obviously at fees into that general entertainment push. And earlier this morning, Guggenheim analyst Michael Morris wrote, quote, we see investor confidence in an incrementally compelling streaming offering as key to further share appreciation. We see potential to further leverage marquee general entertainment for both growth and efficiency as undervalued at the current share price. And if you take a look at shares today, they are, well, they're down right now, but they were up at the market open. They're down about 1%.
But over the past year, those shares are up more than 60%. So some potential tailwinds coming for WBD. And it's a company that we've seen really struggle over this past year or so with that merger. All right, well, we'll see what happens. Thanks for tracking in for us, Ali. Appreciate it. Your finishedım, Bundestag funded contact Ðтотçu.
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