AMC Networks is still struggling as cable TV continues to shrink. During the company’s earnings report for the first quarter of 2025, which was reported on Friday, AMC Networks saw decreases across subscription revenues, content licensing and advertising, all of which was credited to contraction in the linear TV business.
Overall, domestic operations decreased 7% from 2024, coming in at $486 million. That includes content licensing, which decreased 13% to $54 million, and advertising revenues, which decreased 15% to $119 million primarily due to linear ratings declines. The drop in content licensing had to do with what programs were available to be licensed during the period. The first quarter of 2024 saw a boost due to the sale of AMC’s rights to “Killing Eve.” During the earnings call for the quarter, executives for the company noted that a bigger content licensing deal that was originally planned for this quarter is expected to appear in the company’s second quarter.
As for subscription revenues, which also fall under domestic operations, that told a more interesting story. Overall, the category saw a 3% decrease to $313 million due to declines in cable TV. During the period, affiliate revenues declined 12% to $156 million primarily due to subscriber declines as well as contractual rate decreases when it came to renewals, though that particular factor had less of an effect. However, this decline was offset by streaming revenues, which increased 8% to $157 million largely due to a price hike AMC+ implemented in January.
Also, starting this quarter and moving forward, AMC Networks has changed how it defines and reports “streaming subscribers.” The company will no longer be including subscribers who receive access to AMC’s streaming services through a video package that also includes access to the network’s linear programming. So, for example, though a Charter’s Spectrum TV subscriber would technically have access to AMC+ through Charter’s deal with AMC, that subscriber would not be counted as part of the company’s overall subscriber base. Only subscribers who pay a fee for one of AMC’s services, either directly through a direct-to-consumer (DTC) offering or through a third-party platform or channels store, such as Prime Video Channels, will be counted.
Here are the quarter’s key results:
Revenue: $555.2 million, down 6.9% year over year for the first quarter.
Net Income Attributable to Stockholders: $18 million, down 60.6% year over year for the first quarter.
Earnings per Share: $0.34, down 67% year over year for the first quarter.
Subscribers: 10.2 million, a number that’s consistent with the first quarter of 2024. However, that’s an almost 2% drop compared to the 10.4 million subscribers the company reported at the end of 2024.
“The linear market remains challenged. That’s sort of well understood. Our performance on linear almost entirely a function of the ratings environment. That is very similar dynamic to last year in terms of the split between ratings and what we call marketplace or pricing; that’s pretty that’s been consistent on the linear side, year over year. In fact, in Q1 linear was, frankly, a little bit stronger than we had expected,” Patrick O’Connell, executive vice president and Chief Financial Officer, said in an earning call for the quarter.
During the quarter, AMC Networks launched ad-supported AMC+ availability for Spectrum TV Select customers starting at the end of March. This was part of the company’s multi-year renewal with the telecommunications giant, which was announced last September. Looking ahead, AMC plans to expand its FAST channels business with the upcoming Acorn TV Mysteries.
Free cash flow was $94 million in a quarter. O’Connell noted that company is “on track” to achieve its projected $220 million free cash flow for the year. Though he predicted that is immortalization and cash content spend is likely going to be “slightly lower” compared to last year, the volume of productions will remain roughly the same in terms of the number of episodes AMC Networks is producing.
The company also addressed the currently challenging ad marketplace. Though it wasn’t directly addressed on the call, this earnings season has been defined by early advertising uncertainty as companies try to figure out what impact the Trump administration’s tariffs will have on their bottom lines and how that will impact their marketing spends.
“We remain encouraged by the strength of our programming and our significant advanced and digital advertising capabilities,” Kristin Dolan, CEO of AMC Networks, said on Friday. Later on the call, Dolan emphasized that the company has 19 FAST channels as well as 136 feeds on 12 different platforms.
“If you integrate that with the existing ad-supported streaming services in AMC+ and soon Shudder and the others following behind that, we just keep expanding our capacity for digital advertising,” Dolan said. “We couple that with the technological advances that we have in both digital insertion on linear and then integrated selling of segments across all of these 136, instances of products in a digital format. So it’s all coming together, which helps us I think sustain our momentum when the marketplace gets a little chunky like it is right now.”
