The merged studio’s last stand-alone quarter shows Paramount+ carrying the load just as the bill for Warner Bros. comes due.
Skydance earned $73 million last quarter. It now owes about $87 billion. Those two numbers frame the first earnings report from the company formed when Paramount Skydance closed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery on Oct. 6. The results, released Monday in a shareholder letter filed with the SEC, cover the three months ended Sept. 30, so they show Paramount on its own, before Warner Bros. joined the books.
Revenue rose 5% to $7.03 billion. Streaming did the heavy lifting: Paramount+ revenue climbed 21% to $2.13 billion, and the service ended the quarter with 82.2 million subscribers, up about 600,000 from June, TheDesk reported. Traditional television went the other way. TV Media revenue fell 7% to $3.02 billion as advertising slid 8%.
The balance sheet is the bigger story. Skydance paid for Warner with $47 billion of new equity and $57 billion of new secured debt, leaving gross debt near $87 billion against roughly $10 billion in cash. Management wants net leverage down to three times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization by the end of 2029, and it is targeting at least $6 billion in run-rate cost savings within three years, with about 30% landing in year one.
Investors are also losing a scoreboard. Starting with fourth-quarter results, the company said it “will no longer provide quarterly subscriber disclosures,” and guidance shifts to an annual basis. The combined Paramount+, HBO and HBO Max base stands at 203 million, a figure the company says does not account for overlap. Forbes reported that HBO lost about 4.9 million subscribers, a number the shareholder letter does not break out.
“It is five weeks since we launched the combined company, so these are early days,” David Ellison said on the call, according to an Investing.com transcript. The early days already carry a warning. Skydance said the underperformance of the Warner Bros. film slate could cut fourth-quarter profit by up to $200 million, and a Paramount+ and HBO Max bundle is due in early 2027.
Sources
- Skydance (SEC filing) – Q3 2026 shareholder letter, Exhibit 99
- TheDesk – Skydance revenue rises 5 percent during Q3, before WBD acquisition
- Forbes – HBO Max Subscriber Losses Temper Skydance Streaming Growth
- Investing.com – Earnings call transcript: Skydance Q3 2026
Featured photo: Paramount Pictures Melrose Gate entrance, by Laura Alier, licensed CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
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