Starz Posts First Quarter Revenue Dip, Digital-Led Strategy

Starz executives were bullish Friday about the premium cabler’s digital-led transformation making headway in the first quarter, despite posting a revenue dip and a widened loss.

During the three months to June 30, overall revenues at the premium cabler were $307.9 million, just down from a year-earlier $319.7 million. OTT streaming revenue was virtually unchanged at $221.3 million, while linear and other revenue fell back to $86.6 million, compared to $98.6 million in the same period of 2025, due to continued secular decline in the traditional cable TV business.  

“We expect this revenue trend to continue, putting us on a solid path toward achieving our outlook of positive annual OTT revenue growth in 2026,” Jeffrey Hirsch, president and CEO of Starz, said in prepared remarks to analysts on Friday as his company has focused on streaming-led growth to expand its market share.

Starz reported a widened net loss of $189.4 million, against year-earlier $42.6 million net loss, due mainly to one-off restructuring costs of $147 million in the quarter after ending a Universal Pictures film output deal earlier this year. Cleaning up the balance sheet comes amid a strategic shift to digital services and streaming TV growth to go beyond legacy linear cable packages.

“We continue to expect this to be the final content restructuring charge of this magnitude going forward, which sets the company up for meaningfully lower restructuring activity from here,” Scott Macdonald, Starz CFO, said in his prepared remarks to be given during a pre-market analyst call.

Starz has also looked after its separation from Lionsgate to develop its own IP in-house and on a lower per-episode content cost overall, and to draw from within the Power and Outlander universes for new series. On Friday, Starz pointed to momentum in building viewer engagement with new series like Fightland, the finale of Outlander and a premiere for season 5 of the urban-oriented Raising Kanan series.

“The content portfolio in the quarter generated the second-highest audience engagement quarter of all time. This marks the fourth consecutive quarter of engagement growth since we separated,” Hirsch added. Starz also has upcoming the return of P-Valley, season 2 of Blood of my Blood from the Outlander universe and Antoine Fuqua’s Michael biopic to land on Starz after its breakout theatrical run.

“The financial story for Starz is getting stronger and simpler every quarter: growing OTT revenue, expanding margins, growing free cash flow, and reducing leverage. We’re confident in our trajectory, and we look forward to continuing to demonstrate our progress,” CFO Macdonald added. With that confidence, Starz raised its adjusted OIBDA guidance from low single-digits to mid single-digits and to reach a 20 percent adjusted OIBDA margin target in the back half of 2027.