Versant earnings report will test Wall Street appetite for cable TV

Versant Media Group will release its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday, giving Wall Street its first glimpse inside a company made up primarily of pay TV networks.

The Comcast spinoff — comprised of CNBC, MS Now, USA Network, Golf Channel, Syfy, E! and Oxygen, as well as digital properties including Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and Sports Engine — debuted on the Nasdaq in January after one of the media industry’s most significant transactions in recent years.

The company’s first-ever quarterly results will provide more detail into a portfolio of assets that were long embedded in Comcast’s NBCUniversal TV results. They will also test Wall Street’s appetite for cable TV at a time when the market has faced deep pressures.

Ahead of going public, Versant released financials that showed declining revenue in recent years. Versant’s assets generated $7.1 billion in revenue in 2024, down from $7.4 billion in 2023 and $7.8 billion in 2022, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Versant’s stock has dropped about 25% since its January debut, weighed down by expected selling related to the spinoff. The company’s market capitalization stands at roughly $4.8 billion.

It’s a rarity these days to see pure-play media stocks going public — especially those made up solely of TV networks. Last year Newsmax, the conservative cable news network, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Its shares initially soared before falling precipitously since its debut.

Versant makes more than 80% of its overall revenue from pay TV distribution. While that business is still profitable, the longtime cash cow for the media industry has been declining as customers flee the bundle for streaming alternatives.

“At Versant, 62% of our audience comes from live programming across sports and news,” CEO Mark Lazarus said during the company’s investor day in December.

“We feel very confident in our position. And the last year, the deals we’ve done, I think bears that out,” he added.

Versant’s sports- and news-heavy content slate has been a key part of its pitch to investors — as has its light debt load and its emphasis on digital properties as future drivers of revenue and earnings growth.

“Sports and news focus is positive, as Versant has far fewer of the lower-value general entertainment networks that some peers do,” Raymond James analysts wrote in a research note earlier this year. “While Versant lacks ‘Tier One’ sports like NFL, NBA, college football, etc., we think its sports lineup (significant golf rights, WWE, NASCAR, etc.) combined with MS NOW, CNBC, and other networks, supports VSNT’s value to distributors.”

Before its spinout, NBCUniversal negotiated carriage agreements with most major distributors, like Charter Communications and Google’s YouTube TV, that included Versant’s networks. Those agreements hold for at least the next two years even after the spinout — an important cushion as these negotiations have become increasingly fraught and can lead to content blackouts.

“More than half of our pay TV subscribers are governed by agreements that go through 2028 and beyond … many of our sports agreements … go well past 2030,” said Anand Kini, Versant COO and CFO, during the investor day. “We view this as really important because the long-term nature of these partnerships highlights the stability of our business and also provides great visibility in the years to come.”

Versant networks will face the first test on their own at the negotiation table this year when two distribution agreements come up for renewal, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. A Versant spokesperson declined to comment on the upcoming discussions.

Typically, news and sports networks hold more weight during such negotiations, but blackouts are becoming more common, even for those with top-tier rights such as the NFL.

Yet the traditional TV bundle has shown a glimmer of stability recently, despite the focus on streaming.

Charter, one of the largest distributors of the bundle in the U.S., reported an addition of cable customers in the quarter ended Dec. 31 — its first quarterly gain since 2020.

Comcast and other distributors, however, still reported customer losses — albeit at a slower rate than recent declines. That’s a sign of possible stabilization, according to Craig Moffett, analyst at MoffettNathanson.

In light of its weight toward traditional TV networks, Versant’s leadership has told Wall Street it’s in the midst of a pivot.

“We view 2026 as the first year of our business model transition,” Kini said in December.

Versant executives told Wall Street of their intention to invest in its direct-to-consumer products and ad-supported TV expansion, among other growth initiatives.

Long term, executives are targeting a future in which 50% of Versant’s revenue is derived from pay TV and the other 50% comes from digital, platform, subscription, ad-supported and transactional businesses.

M&A is another part of the equation, although bulking up on linear TV networks is not in the plan, executives have said. Already, the company has announced deals such as the acquisition of Free TV Networks, a provider of free over-the-air digital broadcast networks, and Indy Cinema Group, a cloud-based cinema operating system, which was folded into Fandango.

The question, however, is whether Wall Street has the patience to see the business evolve past its focus on the bundle.

Comcast’s spinoff of Versant’s channels was an effort to separate itself from a deteriorating business. Warner Bros. Discovery started down a similar route — announcing it would split its TV networks from its streaming assets — before striking an agreement with Paramount Skydance to sell the entirety of the company.

Analysts that have initiated coverage of Versant list the various highlights of the business, from strong free cash flow to a portfolio heavy on sports and news, while still voicing some hesitation.

“We are Neutral-rated on VSNT given the secular challenges in the linear networks business, while [remaining] encouraged by the company’s efforts in the platforms business,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in research note in January.