Innovid reported a loss in the third quarter despite a big increase in revenue.

Innovid's net loss was $11.8 million, or 9 cents a share, compared to loss of $8.4 million, or 34 cents a share, a year ago, when the company went public. Costs were up following the acquisition of TVSquared earlier this year.

Revenue rose 47% to $34.5 million.

"Our growth was predominantly driven by CTV, which accounted for 50% of revenue excluding TVSquared, a new record for the business," said Zvika Netter, co-founder and CEO. "I'm especially happy to share that we reported $2.9 million in third quarter Adjusted EBITDA, significantly exceeding our expectations. This is a result of the proactive measures we have taken to implement post-merger synergies to improve margins during the quarter and on a go-forward basis."

Measurement generated $7.8 million, or about 23% of Innovid’s revenue in the quarter, up from 1% a year ago, and up 23% on a pro-forma basis including the revenue from TVSquared a year ago.

Also: The Trade Desk Adds Innovid Measurement in U.K., Germany

Innovid said fourth quarter revenue is expected to be in line with its previous full-year guide, in the range of $34 million to $36 million, reflecting 31% to 39% year-over-year growth on an as-reported basis, and 6% to 12% year-over-year growth on a pro forma basis.

Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $1 million to $3 million.

For the full year, total annual adjusted EBITDA is expected to be nearly breakeven or positive with revenue in the $127 million to $129 million range. ■

 Vizio swung to a profit in the third-quarter as gains at its Platform Plus business more than offset a drop in device sales.

Net income was $2 million, or 1 cent a share, compared to a net loss of $18.6 million, or 10 cents a share, a year ago.

Revenue fell 26% to $435 million.

Gross profit from Vizio's Platform Plus business rose 38% to $78.9 million. Platform Plus net revenue — including advertising — rose 49% to $128 million. Average revenue per user rose 39% to $27.69.

Also: Vizio Offers Smart TV User Accounts for Managing Streaming Subscriptions

SmartCast Active accounts rose 15% to 16.6 million and hours viewed rose 17% to 4.2 billion hours.

Device revenue fell 39% to $307 million as smart TV shipments fell 15% to 1.2 million. Gross profit from Vizio's device business fell 95% to $1.2 million.

Vizio said it expects its Platform Plus business to have a gross profit of between $84 million and $87 million in the fourth quarter and net revenue of $138 million to $142 million.

"An important motto for Vizio has always been growth meets discipline," said CEO William Wang. "Our third-quarter results are a continued reflection of this as we grew our platform revenue by 49% and our total company adjusted EBITDA came in at 417 million, all of which surpassed the high end of our guidance ranges." ■

Tegna, in the process of being acquired by Standard General, reported higher third quarter earnings and revenue.

The company said it was “on track” to complete the transaction in the second half of the year, subject to regulatory and other closing conditions.

Net income rose 13.9% to $146.1 million, or 65 cents a share, from $128.3 million, or 58 cents, a year ago.

Revenue rose 6.2% to $803.1 million.

Subscription revenue rose 2% to a record $377 million.

Advertising and marketing services revenue fell 12% to $321 million from last year, when the Olympics aired on Tegna's large group of NBC affiliates.

Political ad revenue was $93 million, up 28% from the prior midterm election in 2018. ■

The Trade Desk reported lower third-quarter earnings as expenses, including stock based compensation increased.

Net income was $15.9 million, or 3 cents a share, down from $59.3 million, or 12 cents a share a year ago.

Revenue increased 31% to $394.8 million.

Operating expenses at The Trade Desk rose 66% to $366 million. General and administrative expenses rose from $52.1 million from $130.9 million, and include stock-based compensation expense related to a long-term CEO performance grant of $66 million and $197 million for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2022, respectively.

"Q3 was another strong quarter for The Trade Desk with 31% growth that significantly outpaced the market. This performance underlines the value of decisioned media buying on The Trade Desk as the world's largest advertisers seek to maximize return on every campaign dollar," said Jeff Green, founder and CEO of The Trade Desk.

"Nowhere is this more apparent than in the rapidly growing market for Connected TV advertising, as more of the world’s leading CTV platforms partner with us to bring advertising demand to their inventory. Additionally, more of the world’s top retailers are working with us to help our clients unleash retail data to tie campaign activity to actual retail sales. In both CTV and retail data, we are helping our clients pioneer new approaches to identity that preserve the value of relevant advertising while improving consumer privacy," Green said.

Analyst Matthew Swanson said The Trade Desk “reported a strong quarter in what continues to be a challenging environment,” with revenue and adjusted EBITDA above Wall Street forecasts.

“Management noted their growth in the quarter significantly outpaced the market as advertisers look to maximize campaign dollars. Management also noted success in both CTV and Retail Media both strong secular growth trends,” Swanson noted.

Looking ahead, Swanson noted that The Trade Desk lowered guidance for fourth-quarter revenue to at least $490 million, but raised its expectation for adjusted EBITDA to $228 million.  ■

DoubleVerify reported higher third-quarter earnings and indicated that the economic headwinds facing the industry won't slow it down in the remainder of the year.

Net income rose 30% to $10.3 million, or 6 cents a share, up from $7.9 million, or 5 cents a share, a year ago.

Revenues rose 35% to $112.3 million.

The company raised the midpoint of full year guidance for total revenue growth to 36%, or between $450 million and $454 million and said it expects to achieve adjusted EBITDA margins of 31%.

"We delivered another strong quarter and outstanding year-to-date performance fueled by continued momentum in programmatic activation and social and CTV measurement," said CEO Mark Zagorski.

"Our revenue growth of 35% in the third quarter and 40% year-to-date has significantly outpaced that of the broader digital advertising industry as we continue to win new customers and gain market share across geographies and platforms," Zagorski said. "Additionally, we continue to expand product coverage across premium CTV environments such as Netflix and pre-eminent social media platforms such as TikTok, LinkedIn and Twitter."

Also: DoubleVerify CEO Sees Netflix Growing CTV Advertising By 50%

Analyst Matthew Swanson of RBC Capital Markets rated DoubleVerify stock as "outperform," based on what he called a "standout" quarter in the face of a deteriorating macro economy and TV ad market.

Swanson was also impressed that DoubleVerify raised its full-year guidance, making it unique among ad-tech companies.

"DV's results again pointed to the differentiation of its model, volume-based pricing and platform approach," Swanson said. "Looking out to 2023, we feel additional product cross-sell could accelerate if the macro improves, but on the secular growth driver front, we look for a benefit to CTV from new AVOD inventory, especially Netflix in the 2H, as well as social growth in TikTok and Meta opening up its news feed." ■

Measurement company Comscore reported a larger-than-expected loss in the third quarter as it took big write-offs and charges.

Comscore’s third quarter net loss was $52.4 million, or 60 cents a share, compared to a loss of $2 million, or 2 cents a share, a year ago. Contributing to the red ink were a non-cash goodwill impairment charge of $45 million and restructuring costs of $5.6 million.

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization was up 4%.

Third quarter revenue increased 0.2% to $92.8 million.

Cross platform solutions revenue was up 14% to $40.4 million, driven by local and national TV measurement and a continued rebound in movies.

Digital ad solutions revenue was down 8.2% due to slower ad spending in the quarter.

Comscore lowered its estimate for full-year revenue growth to low-single digits.

“Since stepping into the CEO role in July, I’ve been laser focused on improving speed, execution and profitability,” said Jon Carpenter.

“In the third quarter, we rounded out our executive team with leadership positions that I believe are critical to the success of Comscore,” Carpenter said. “We committed to delivering faster data to our customers, and in September we rolled out our Comscore TV Pulse data with a delivery speed of 48 hours. 

Also: New Comscore CEO Jon Carpenter Rushing To Bring Clients Data Faster

Under Carpenter, the company also announced a restructuring plan aimed at cutting costs and aligning its resources to strategic priorities.

“We continue to see momentum in our local and national television businesses, and even though the current economic environment is challenging for our industry, we are excited about what's ahead for Comscore," Carpenter said. ■

Nexstar Media Group is in talks to bring more National Basketball Association games to its stations.

Nexstar made a deal with the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers to exclusively broadcast 15 games on its L.A. station KTLA this season. The games are also being aired on other Nexstar stations in California. (The Clippers’ other games appear on regional sports network Bally Sports SoCal.)

On Nexstar’s third-quarter earnings call with analysts, chairman and CEO Perry Sook said the broadcast group was in talks with at least two other NBA owners about carving out a similar package for its stations.

“I think you’ll see more of this as times go on,” Sook said.

Any deal would be done in consultation with the incumbent regional sports network and could benefit the RSN by whetting the appetite of sports fans and turning the growing number of non-subscribers into subscribers, he said. The big over-the-air reach could also help teams sell tickets, he added. 

Sook was also asked about the potential financial impact of NBC shortening its primetime and turning the 10 p.m. ET/PT hour over to affiliates, which network officials have said they are considering.

“It would be good,” Sook said. “We’ll make more money with an hour of news at 10 than we do with an hour of network programming.” The affiliates would be able to sell all of the ad inventory in a local newscast, compared to just a minute or two in a primetime network show.

“Listen, we have a number of Fox and CW and MyNetwork TV stations that program news in that last hour of prime, and they are extremely profitable,” Sook said.

If the networks cut back the number of hours of programming provided each week, stations would pay them less in reverse retransmission programming fees, he added.

Nexstar now owns a network of its own, having acquired at 75% stake in The CW.

CFO Lee Ann Gilha said Nexstar still expected to make the money-losing network profitable by 2025.

The CW will have revenue of about $70 million in the fourth quarter and run up a negative EBITDA of about the same amount. There will also be an eight-figure restructuring charge related to The CW. Nexstar will be able to offset a portion of the losses against taxes payable, Gilha said.

By next season, The CW’s commitment to most of the programming produced by former owners Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery will be “minimal,” she said.

“Warner Bros. and Paramount are not precluded from selling us programming,” Sook added. “It’s just going to have to be a financial deal that we like, and there may be a couple of shows that distinguish themselves this year that we want to roll over into next year.”

During the call, Sook also tried to persuade analysts and investors that Nexstar was likely to perform better than other media companies if the economy goes south.

Sook said that more than 50% of Nexstar revenue comes from distribution fees, “a contractual and recurring revenue source that has historically been resistant to periods of economic slowdown.”

Less than one-third of Nexstar’s third-quarter revenue came from core television advertising, making the company less dependent on ad revenue than ever before, he said. And political advertising will continue to grow, with local TV getting the lions share because, like other marketers, candidates have found that broadcast is best for reaching mass audiences.

Local advertising has also been more resilient than national advertising he said and Nexstar’s 1,500 member sales forces will be difficult to compete with.

“There is no one in the TV industry with greater sales resources and consumer reach than Nexstar,” Sook said. “This isn’t something the larger AVOD or streaming companies can easily replicate. While some pure-play streaming companies are now embarking on an effort to replicate our business model, ours is proven and consistent and currently delivering today.” ■

Boosted by big political ad spending, Nexstar Media Group reported higher third-quarter profits on record net revenue.

Net income was $288.7 million, or $7.30 a share, up from $169.6 million, or $3.90 a share, a year ago.

Revenue rose 9.7% to $1.269 billion.

Advertising revenue was up 18.8% to $529 million, with core advertising revenue (excluding political revenue) down 7.6% to $399.7 million. Nexstar generated $129.3 million in political revenue in the quarter, up from $12.4 million a year ago in a non-election year.

Distribution revenue rose 3.7% to $641.7 million. Digital revenue rose 5.7% to $85.7 million.

Also: Nexstar, Verizon Fios Reach Deal To End Two-Week Blackout

“Nexstar delivered another quarter of record financial results as third quarter net revenue rose 9.7%, led by strong growth in political advertising, distribution, and digital revenue,” said CEO Perry Sook.

“Nexstar’s results continue to benefit from our diverse, scaled, efficient and low leverage business model. Over 50% of revenue is contractual and from non-advertising sources and approximately 70% of our core advertising is from local advertisers which are historically more consistent in their spend throughout economic cycles,” Sook said. 

Looking ahead, Sook said the company expects to benefit again from political advertising spending in the fourth quarter.

In 2033, Sook said he expects to see the upside of renewed distribution agreements covering more than half of its subscribers.

“We expect 2024 to benefit from another record year for political advertising due to the presidential election combined with the benefit of another wave of distribution agreement renewals for approximately 40% of our subscribers,” Sook said. “Longer-term, we believe implementing our plans for The CW Network, growing NewsNation and progressing towards the monetization of our spectrum through the deployment of ATSC 3.0 technology will complement our other growth initiatives to support the further enhancement of shareholder value.”  ■

Roku stock plunged nearly 20% in after hours trading Wednesday after the struggling streaming company reported another quarter-over-quarter decline in revenue.

Specifically “platform revenue,” which is comprised mainly of Roku’s advanced advertising sales, dropped to $670.4 million in the third quarter from $673.2 million in Q2. Platform revenue is still growing for Roku at a year-over-year rate of 15%.

Roku had warned equity analysts about what it projected as a weak second half of 2022. And it actually beat forecasts in a number of areas.

Declines for “player revenue” — which is mainly sales of Roku connected-TV devices — decelerated by just $200,000 in Q3 from Q2, coming in at $91 million. That business, severely affected by the global supply chain crisis and the scarcity of certain silicon components, is down 7% year over year and had declined by a whopping 46% sequentially at one point earlier this year.

Overall revenue was off by about $3 million sequentially to $761.4 million, but is still expanding at 12% on an annualized basis. Consensus analysts' forecasts had expected revenue to come in at only around $694 million. The net loss of $122 million for the quarter also beat forecasts.

Growth in active users also sped up, with 2.3 million new regulars joining the party in Q3 vs. just 1.8 million in Q2.

Engagement was up, too. Total time spent on the Roku platform, which had narrowly declined in the second quarter, was up nearly 6% to 21.9 billion hours.

And average revenue per customer increased by 15 cents to $44.25, and was up 10% year over year.

Certainly, Roku isn't the only streaming company reporting slow ad sales. YouTube just announced its first quarterly drop in ad revenue last week.

Perhaps investors were reacting to Roku's sustained bearish outlook on its business. 

“As we enter the holiday season, we expect the macro environment to further pressure consumer discretionary spend and degrade advertising budgets, especially in the TV scatter market,” the company said in its Q3 earnings letter to shareholders. “We expect these conditions to be temporary, but it is difficult to predict when they will stabilize or rebound. We therefore anticipate Q4 Player revenue and Platform revenue to be lower year over year.”

Roku also revealed that chief financial officer Steve Louden will step down in 2023 after a replacement is hired and trained. Louden, a former Washington Mutual and Disney financial executive, joined Roku in 2015 and helped guide the company’s IPO.

It was also announced back in 2019 that he'd step down, but Louden reversed course on that decision. ■

Amid a tough overall third quarter for Comcast, the cable operator did have some good news to report in regard to its no-longer-so-fledging wireless service. 

Xfinity Mobile, which will celebrate its six-year anniversary in January, enjoyed an all-time best 337,000 line additions in Q3, upping total lines of service past the 5 million mark. 

Comcast recently introduced a $30-per-line monthly price for unlimited service on plans involving two or more users, undercutting wireless incumbents AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile. 

Also: Economy, Hurricane Have Comcast Looking Ahead To Tough Q4

Xfinity Mobile relies heavily on Wi-Fi connectivity to Comcast’s wireline network, with its primary cellular access coming via an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) wholesale agreement the cable operator has long had with Verizon Communications. Operational costs are shared via a partnership with Charter Communiations and its Spectrum Mobile service. 

The performance of the service has been good enough for Comcast to recently tout its Ookla speed rankings. Likewise, Comcast issued a similar press release earlier this year to tub thump its outcome in an American Customer Satisfaction Index survey of wireless users. 

The service remains confined to the Comcast footprint, however. 

“We set out to build a different kind of mobile service designed for the way people use their phones today — with the internet at the center of the experience,” Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said in a statement. “Our goal is simple — keep our Internet customers happy with a mobile service that offers incredible value; attract new customers who want a great connectivity experience inside and away from the home; and build a profitable business that has a long runway for growth.” ▪️

For the first time ever, Google reported a quarterly decline in advertising revenue for YouTube, with sales dropping 1.9% in the third quarter to just over $7.07 billion.

It’s perhaps the clearest indicator yet that the technology-media-telecom business is in for some choppy economic waters as it gets set to close out 2022.

Notably, in the third quarter of 2021, YouTube ad revenue grew by 43%.

Also read: Verizon and Snap Q3 Earnings Foretell Coming Hard Times For the Media Biz

The performance fell well short of equity analysts' consensus forecasts, with Google delivering total revenue of $69.1 billion vs. expectations of $70.6 billion.

Google CFO Ruth Porat told equity analysts during the company's Q3 call Tuesday afternoon that declines for YouTube, as well as the mega-profitable Google Search, “reflect a pullback in spend by some advertisers, as we first noted last quarter.”

Expecting headwinds and tough comparable metrics in coming quarters, Google said it's developing new ways to monetize YouTube Shorts, the short-form video platform it launched in response to TikTok.

“We’re sharpening our focus on a clear set of product and business priorities,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google.

Google typically does not break out revenue or subscriber performance for subscription services, including vMVPD YouTube TV. In its second quarter call, it revealed that the platform had surpassed 5 million users. ■

In the hours and weeks after Tuesday, April 19, when Netflix initiated one of the more notorious stock routes in Wall Street history by disclosing that it had actually lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter, the legion of equity analysts, tech influencers and reporters covering the company focused on what they saw as a flawed content strategy. 

"Just because one show works doesn’t mean subscribers need several others just like it," wrote TechCrunch's Lauren Forristal. "This formulaic model of programming feels too algorithm-reliant in its decision-making process."

Also read: Are Sluggish Smart TV Shipments Really Behind the Growth Problems for Netflix and Other Streamers? Just Look at This Chart

LightShed Partners' equity analyst Richard Greenfield blogged, "Management pointed to several explanations for the unforeseen loss of subs. Yet, the single biggest issue that really was not talked about is that Netflix’s content, especially its English-language content, is simply not resonating relative to the level of spend."

But it appears the supply chain-related explanation that Netflix prioritized first in its April 19 letter to shareholders might have actually identified the biggest underlying cause of the streaming company's temporary halt in customer growth -- the market for addressable streaming homes. 

Explosive sales of smart TVs in markets spanning U.S./Canada to Asia/Pacific drove streaming adoption -- and Netflix subscriptions -- to new heights during the pandemic. But as COVID wore on, big TV manufacturers including TCL and Hisense started having trouble finding components, just like automakers and everyone else. 

"It’s increasingly clear that the pace of growth into our underlying addressable market (broadband homes) is partly dependent on factors we don’t directly control, like the uptake of connected TVs (since the majority of our viewing is on TVs), the adoption of on-demand entertainment, and data costs," Netflix's Q1 letter reads.  We believe these factors will keep improving over time, so that all broadband households will be potential Netflix customers."

“Smart TV penetration growth has slowed dramatically, with Netflix sub growth heavily correlated to the growth in smart TV adoption,” Greenfield conceded. “Not only did smart TV penetration benefit from a COVID pull-forward, but it is now being pressured by supply issues including a resurgence of COVID in China.”

Over the summer, these factors did improved, as Netflix predicted they might. Despite a weak first quarter for global smart TV shipments, S&P Global Market Intelligence media research unit Kagan reported in August, declining panel prices and the coming World Cup in November 2022 were expected to overcome the negative effects of inflation to spark consumer demand by the end of 2022.

Also read: Netflix Stock Booms as Streaming Company Beats Forecasts on Subscribers and Revenue in Q3

As it reported last week, Netflix swung to a gain of 2.4 million subscribers in the third quarter (and 4.5 million predicted for Q4), the catalyst in the company's 23% stock price spike over the last 10 days. 

Revenue growth probably can't explain a recovery of more than $50 billion to Netflix's market capitalization. 

Netflix revenue growth further decelerated in the third quarter, falling to 5.9%, about a third of what it was a year ago when revenue expanded at 16.3%. 

As for content being the differentiator, there were massive hit shows in Q3, with Stranger Things: Season 4 and Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story gathering the platform's largest English-language audiences ever. 

But Netflix had big hits in the first quarter, too, with season 2 of Bridgerton and another Shonda Rhimes sensation, limited series Inventing Anna also winding up on the company's all-time audience rankers, along with Ryan Reynolds film The Adam Project. 

In Q3, Netflix didn't experience a global event that caused it to lose a chunk of subscribers all at once, as it did when it had to suddenly pull out of Russia, and abandon 700,000 customers, amid that country's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

But it's hard to pinpoint another factor beyond improved supply chain dynamics that reignited customer growth. The cheaper, ad-supported tier Netflix has been developing won't debut until November. And its crackdown on account-sharing won't bear fruit until next year. 

Notably, Netflix hasn't talk about the supply chain in investor letters subsequent to Q1. However, the streaming company -- which has been more conservative and out ahead in terms of issuing guidance since April 19 -- will no longer be forecasting customer expansion, either. 

This seems to indicate that outside of initiating a tier with limited ads and cracking down on password sharers, little is different from the Netflix priced at $161 a share back in June and the one valued at more than $287 today. Netflix has simply upped its investor relations game ... and global factors beyond its reach have improved. 

Could it be that six months of pearl clutching, which saw a swing in Netflix market capitalization of more than $100 billion, came down to a simple, temporary market dynamic ... that no one in the room had any control over?

Could be ... ▪️

Verizon Communications on Friday touted the addition of 234,000 fixed wireless access residential customers in the third quarter and another 108,000 FWA subscribers on the business-services side, upping its total FWA base to over 1 million users.

It's been a rapid emergence for FWA technology, which lets consumers use 5G wireless networks for home internet service. T-Mobile, which reports its Q3 numbers on October 27, now has more than 1.5 million FWA customers.

Verizon added only 38,000 wireline internet customers otherwise, with less-than-expected growth in its legacy Fios internet business being offset by sustained losses of digital subscriber line (DSL) customers.

But the bottom-line addition of 272,000 total wireline broadband users for Verizon will likely be far more than either Comcast or Charter Communications report for the third quarter when they do their earnings calls next week.

For Verizon, the FWA story provides a little buffer from the more challenging economics currently impacting its core wireless business, where it added only 8,000 postpaid customers in the quarter.

And the company's pay TV presence continued to dwindle in Q3, with its Fios TV service losing another 95,000 customers, a 40% year-over-year surge in cord-cutting. Verizon has just under 3.5 million remaining Fios TV subscribers.

Verizon's stock was down around 5% in afternoon trading Friday. ▪️

Netflix stock surged by nearly 35% in after-hours trading, as the streaming company reported better-than-expected third-quarter performances in regard to subscribers and revenue.

Buoyed by some of its biggest programming hits ever over the summer — including the fourth season of Stranger Things and the Ryan Murphy-produced serial-killer miniseries biopic Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story — Netflix returned to global customer growth, beating forecasts soundly with 2.4 million subscriber additions.

Also read: Ryan Murphy's 'The Watcher' Has Netflix Best Debut This Year For a New Show - Netflix Weekly Rankings

Netflix had forecasted just over 1 million paid user additions.

In the saturated U.S. and Canadian region, Netflix didn't lose customers for the first time in several quarters, actually adding around 100,000 of them.

The company predicted customer additions of 4.5 million for Q4, but said it will be the last time it issues forward-looking subscriber guidance as it focuses on revenue growth as a primary data point in the future. 

Revenue expanded by nearly 6% to $7.92 billion in Q3 — nothing like the 16% expansion experienced in the year-ago frame, but again, better than the anticipated $7.85 billion.

For the fourth quarter, Netflix is projecting revenue expansion of only around 1%. Netflix said the historically strong U.S. Dollar will result in a foreign exchange rate impact of between $800 million - $1 billion on revenue for the full 2022.

Still, the outcome was starkly happier for Netflix when juxtaposed to "Black Tuesday" six months ago, when a sudden and surprising dip into negative customer growth territory sent Netflix stock tumbling like never before. 

Notably, Netflix's "comeback" arrived even before key changes made in the aftermath of that Q1 crash — the launch of a cheaper ad-supported tier and the crackdown on password-sharing — made it to market. 

And revenue expansion came in at slightly over a third of what it was a year ago, decelerating further beyond Q2's 8.6% growth.

But the emergence of the new ad model, hoisted in just six months, combined with rebounding subscriber growth has clearly restored investor confidence in Netflix. ▪️

CuriosityStream reported what appeared to be stalled subscriber growth for the third quarter, describing the same 20 million customer count it touted back in August for Q2. 

But the "factual" streaming company beat analysts' consensus forecasts for Q3 revenue, reporting a 114% year-over-year uptick to $18.7 million. Revenue was also up sequentially more than 22% over Q2. 

Also read: CuriosityStream Adds Whopping 4 Million Subscribers in Q2 Following Deal with Germany's Spiegel TV

"The sequential improvement in [average revenue per user] was driven by a lower percentage of subscribers on promotional pricing plans," said CuriosityStream CEO Clint Stinchcomb during Tuesday's Q3 earnings call with equity analysts. 

Stinchcomb also said that CuriosityStream expects to meet or surpass full-year revenue guidance of $71 million. 

CuriosityStream's overall operating expenses were about $17.4 million compared with $12.1 million in the third quarter of 2020. Its Q3 EBITDA loss of $8 million compared to an EBITDA loss of $6.7 million last year.

Meanwhile, despite the stagnant customer growth in the third quarter, CuriosityStream's subscriber base is still 43% larger than it was a year ago. 

FuboTV reported another quarter of record revenue, as well as diminished year over year losses, Q3. The live streaming company also reported the reaching of a key milestone since the quarter ended--the 1 million subscriber threshold.

And that's still not all. FuboTV also announced two new acquisitions, including the purchase of French live-streaming company Molotov. 

We'll start with the financial components:

FuboTV reported 156% year over year revenue growth in the quarter to $156.7 million, solidly beating analysts' consensus forecasts of around $144 million. 

Subscribers were up 108% year over year in the third quarter, reaching 944,605 at the end of September and since surpassing 1 million. 

Average revenue per user was up 10% to $74.54, with advertising revenue--an important difference maker in the moribund virtual MVPD market in which fubTV primarily operates--up 147% to $18.6 million. 

Also notable, fubTV's reported a 61% year-over-year decline in net losses, bleeding out $105.9 million in Q3. 

UPDATED 11/10/2021: As for investors, they responded the same, rationale way they always do to a positive earnings report about a streaming company--they hammered the stock. As of Wednesday morning, FuboTV is down 20% on the Nasdaq since the start of Tuesday trading. Although, it should be noted that although fuboTV beat analysts' forecasts, it did miss its own Q3 guidance. 

As for the acquisitions, fuboTV announced a cash and stock deal valued at around $190 million for Molotov SAS, which it calls France's No. live streaming company with 4 million subscribers. 

Molotov will continue to operate out of Paris under co-founder JeanDavid Blanc, its co-founder.

“Molotov has set the benchmark for ad-supported and subscription streaming platforms in Europe,” said David Gandler, co-founder and CEO of fuboTV, in a statement. “We believe this strategic asset will help accelerate our goal of achieving global scale and operating leverage as we continue to improve and innovate on our live, interactive streaming TV experience for sports fans and their families.”

Gandler added: “In August, we launched an At-The-Market (ATM) stock offering program to provide the flexibility to raise capital to accelerate our growth plans, including global expansion. The opportunity offered by Molotov is a perfect example of how we can do this. We look forward to delivering a truly category-defining live TV streaming platform to consumers around the world.”

FuboTV also announced the purchase of Bangalore, India-based Edisn.ai, an AI-powered computer vision platform with patent-pending video recognition technologies.

Roku, a streaming company that seemed to be sailing on a Netflix-like growth trajectory on the Nasdaq just six months ago, is now facing gathering storm clouds.

San Jose, Calif-based Roku reported 51% year over year growth in overall revenue for the third quarter to $680 million, missing analysts' consensus forecasts. Roku also added 1.3 million active accounts from June - September to finish the quarter with 56.4 million. However, Roku continues to see declining growth in proliferation of its platform on a sequential basis. Roku keeps adding new users to its ecosystem, but the additions have been smaller every recent quarter. 

Roku continues to evolve into an advertising powerhouse, with revenue generated on its OTT platform up 82% year over year to $582.5 million. The expansion of platform revenue on a sequential basis also slowed from recent quarters.

Starting in the fourth quarter of last year, however, Roku began warning investors about supply chain issues affecting its hardware side of Roku's business. And those fears seem to be getting realized. "Player" revenue was down 26% in Q3 to $97.4 million, while player gross profit/loss went from a $20.2 million gain in Q3 of 2020 to a $14.6 million loss. 

Those quad-core chips that power Roku gadgets are getting harder to find and more expensive. Roku wants to keep sales volume humming so as not to hinder active user growth and platform revenue. Something's got to give, and that something is Roku profit margins.

"Our player unit costs were impacted by the supply chain disruptions," Roku said in a letter to shareholders. "However, we chose to insulate our consumers from these increased costs to prioritize account growth, resulting in Player gross margin decreasing to -15%. We view this Player gross margin erosion as temporary, and we continue to take action to maximize our manufacturing flexibility, including active sourcing strategies and adapting our software and re-designing for more readily available chips and components."

Roku is also facing an escalating battle with Google, which could culminate in the most popular OTT app this side of Netflix being pulled from the Roku Channel Store on Dec. 9. 

Roku had no update on the Google matter during its call with equity analysts Wednesday. Another potential and similar tech battle with Amazon, reported on late last week by The Information, wasn't even mentioned during the call. 

Investors responded the way they usually do when the slightest iota of bad news is reported about Roku--these skittish traders once again absolutely hammered the stock. It's down 8% in after-hours trading as of the typing of this article. 

The better news for Roku: "Platform engagement," which cratered in the second quarter, amid a poor year-over-year comparison to the height of the 2020 pandemic, when everyone was streaming video at home, rebounded by 600 million hours to 18 billion hours spent streaming on Roku in Q3. 

Verizon lost 68,000 Fios TV customers in the third quarter, finishing the three-month period ending Sept. 30 with only 3.6 million remaining linear pay TV users. 

Meanwhile, Fios Internet net adds came in at 98,000 compared to 139,000 in Q3 of 2020, with the Fios Internet base now standing at 6.49 million customers. 

However, for those tracking the wireline telecom business, these are probably no longer the most important data points.

Verizon, for the first time, disclosed its fixed wireless metrics, revealing that it has 150,000 "fixed wireless access" (FWA) customers, having added 55,000 net adds in the third quarter alone. 

That may not seem like much, but FWA customers accounted for around 43% of total Verizon broadband net additions in Q3, which also factored in the loss of DSL users. 

Was this the biggest growth quarter ever for Verizon's three-year-old fixed-wireless business? The company didn't say. 

"Much of our long-term growth is in fixed wireless access and mobile edge compute," Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg told Wall Street analysts. 

"We are on track to meet our fixed wireless access household coverage targets with an expected 15 million homes passed by the end of the year between 4G and 5G. To date, 5G Home is in 57 markets and the 4G LTE Home in over 200 markets across all 50 states," Vestberg added. 

Sparked by a content slate improved over the second half of the year by the end of pandemic-related production stoppages, Netflix beat third quarter earnings forecasts, earning $7.5 billion in revenue, up 16% year over year, and growing its subscriber ranks by 4.4 million (up from 2.2 million in Q3 2020).

Wall Street prognosticators had predicted that the top global streaming service would report just $7.48 billion in quarterly revenue and paid subscriber adds of just 3.5 million.

With the customer additions, Netflix now has 214 million paid subscribers worldwide. 

In the U.S. and Canada, Netflix returned to growth, adding 70,000 paid users and finishing Q3 with 74.02 million customers. Notably, Netflix has grown its domestic subscriber ranks by less than 1 million over the last 12 months, perhaps indicating that the U.S. SVOD market has become saturated. 

For the second consecutive quarter, Netflix's Asia-Pacific operations drove global customer growth, accounting for half of the total (2.2 million).

Again, Netflix said that it was an improved content slate that drove the growth, with the debut of Season 5 of La Casa de Papel (aka Money Heist) and Season 3 of Sex Education watched by 69 million and 55 million member households, respectively, in their first 28 days on the platform to lead the way.

Filmed in Madrid, Spain, Money Heist represents an earlier phase of success for Netflix's local-language programming strategy, foreshadowing the outsized performance of late Q3 entry Squid Game. 

"La Casa de Papel was our first non-English language title to show that--with subtitling and dubbing--great stories truly can come from anywhere and be loved everywhere. We are now producing local TV and film in approximately 45 countries and have built deep relationships with creative communities around the world," Netflix said in a Tuesday afternoon letter to shareholders. 

Netflix said that it's moving away from releasing metrics in households viewed and toward total minutes viewed. 

Also in the shareholders letter, Netflix made the case that it has ample room to grow engagement, noting that it only accounts for 6% of total TV consumption in September, according to Nielsen, tied with YouTube. 

Notably, when Facebook experience broad-level technical issues on Oct. 4, Netflix said it saw its platform engagement shoot up by 14%.

Charter Communications added about 351,000 high-speed internet customers in Q3, outpacing the prior year gain of 266,000 customers by nearly 100,000, while video losses were slightly higher than in Q3 2018.

Charter ended the third quarter with 24.6 million residential broadband customers, with 85% subscribing to speed tiers of 100 Megabits per second or higher. The quarterly increase in broadband subscribers helped lift overall customer relationships in the period to 27 million, a 3.7% increase over the prior year. Charter also added 276,000 mobile lines in the third quarter, compared to 208,000 mobile line net additions in the second quarter of 2019. As of Sept. 30, Charter served a total of 794,000 mobile lines.

Revenue in the period grew 5.1% to $11.5 billion, and cash flow rose 3.4% to $4.1 billion in the quarter.

"Our strategy of offering high-quality products with good service at attractive prices is working and continues to produce strong customer relationship growth," Charter chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge said in a press release. "In the third quarter, customer relationship growth continued to accelerate and our operating strategy keeps us well-positioned to take advantage of the growth opportunity in front of Charter."

The Walt Disney Co. reported revenue of $14.28 billion in its fiscal third quarter, ended July 2, paced by a 40% jump in studio revenue on continued strength in family animation (Finding Dory, Zootopia) and live-action hits (Captain America: Civil War). Operating income gained 8% to $4.46 billion.

The company also announced a groundbreaking plan for taking its ESPN crown jewel over-the-top via a $1 billion investment in BAMtech, the video streaming unit of Major League Baseball.

Without the deal, cable and broadcast networks held steady and the company did not report any further signs of subscriber erosion or alarming indications of the networks' health. Revenue in the networks unit inched up 2% to $5.9 billion, while operating income was flat at $2.37 billion.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.