fuboTV Inc. (NYSE:FUBO) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

David Gandler: Yes, hi. Very good question. We actually didn’t see anything because most people that visit Fubo or use Fubo are using it for the vast portfolio of sports content we have. And based on some of the data that we’ve seen with respect to plus services, and this may be the reason why the JV has become a hot topic, is that three out of four customers prefer to watch their content on our platform versus a plus service. So, actually I think we’ve also seen that people are confused. About 70% of our customers also prefer to use Fubo for content that is also streamed exclusively on these plus services. So, all-in, I think we’re in a relatively good spot, and it’s clear. People are concerned that customers are tired of friction and fragmentation.

Nikhil Aluru: Understood. And maybe if I could follow up on the plus services. I mean, I guess when you guys discussed Charter and Disney in the past, you’ve talked about how that suggests the industry is heading towards reaggregation, which should benefit the company. But I’m curious if you think that there’s any longer-term risk from what Charter is doing or potentially other future similar DTC bundles in that it could slow the pace of cord cutting and if that might shift the magnitude of new customers entering your funnel? Just curious how you think about that. Thanks.

David Gandler: Yes, thank you. I don’t think we really think about that. As you know, we’ve continued to take share now since for eight years annually. So this is a very robust market. And we are all for competition, and we think consumers should have choice. And we believe the product that we are distributing is a product that people enjoy. So we don’t really see any impact on that front.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Darren Aftahi from ROTH MKM. Please go ahead.

Darren Aftahi: Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Could you talk a little bit about, in general, some more near-term year-to-date ad trends you’re seeing particularly in SAS and then CTV?

John Janedis: Yes. Hey, Darren, it’s John. I’ll start. Maybe I’ll add a little bit on to what I responded to with David’s question. And so we actually saw some good health again coming out of December. As you know, David and I spend a lot of time with our ads team. What I can tell you for Q1 is that we’re actually seeing improvement in terms of the demand factor as the quarters progressed. And so. what I mean is that for call it — January, February, we’re seeing the demand coming closer to run date. I would say now we’re at a point where we’re actually seeing demand for beyond 1Q, meaning March, but also into 2Q and into the 3Q. So I think we feel relatively good about it. On the political side, off of a small base, we saw call it triple-digit growth in Q1.

As a refresh, we put up about call it 4 million-plus in 2022. I’d expect meaningful growth off of that in ’24. But the majority is going to come in and call it from August and beyond. And then, again, from a category perspective, I mentioned the stronger ones for Q1. I would say on the softer side, I’d call it maybe CPG and travel and tourism, if I call that two that were a little bit softer than the portfolio. But again, I still expect to see double-digit growth for Q1.

Darren Aftahi: Great. And then, maybe just one more philosophical question as it relates to the lawsuit. So, there’s a lot of examples of monopolistic practice with Big Tech out there, and antitrust regulators have done nothing about it. So, I’m just curious, in the spirit of the lawsuit given you don’t have unlimited resources, what is your propensity to, I guess dig in kind of to defend your ground here? Is this to the depth or is it something where if you don’t see progress you might relent, just given there’s a very competitive product out there, and legal bills are not going to be cheap? Thanks.

David Gandler: Yes, well again, good question. I think that this is a duel to the death. It has been when we started this company. We are fighting for consumers. We are fighting for our customers. We are fighting for the tens of billions of dollars that are wasted annually by consumers paying for the same content multiple times. This is a very important process. We are sticking to our principles, to our guns, and we’re continuing to be able to chew gum and walk at the same time, as you can see from our numbers. We’re continuing to execute very well. We’re continuing to see revenue growth. We’re operating efficiently. And again we think that we can handle both of these things at the same time.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Shweta Khajuria from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Shweta Khajuria: Okay, thank you for taking my questions. Could you please comment on subscription churn or subscriber churn that you saw from Q4 into Q1? And then, what is baked into your guidance as the year goes through, and do you expect an ongoing improvement if it has continued to improve versus prior seasonality that you’ve seen? And then question two is just to follow-up on your prior answer, David, regarding the lawsuit, in the event that it goes against you, how do you see the future Fubo — I mean, you said you’ve been fighting the good fight, but the fight may get a little bit tougher. So could you comment on that? Thank you.

John Janedis: Shweta, hey, it’s John, I’ll start with churn. And what I would say is that we don’t disclose exact churn numbers, but I could say it’s a couple of things to that. One is, as a reminder, there is seasonality by quarter for the churn. And so, I would say, hard to give you kind of a differential from Q1 to Q4 because I don’t know if it’s overly relevant. What I can tell you, though, directionally, when we look at it year-over-year, it’s been relatively stable.

David Gandler: Sorry, Shweta, could you just repeat the litigation question? I think there were a few questions within the overall comment.