Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Lions Gate Entertainment 3Q 'twenty one Earnings Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Head of Investor Relations, James Marsh. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thanks for joining us for the Lionsgate fiscal twenty twenty one third quarter conference call. We'll begin with opening remarks from our CEO, John Feltheimer followed by remarks from our CFO, Jimmy Barge. After their remarks, we'll open the call for questions. Also joining us on the call today are Vice Chairman, Michael Burns COO, Brian Goldsmith Chairman of the TV Group, Kevin Beggs and Chairman of the Motion Picture Group, Joe Drake.
And from Starz, we have President and CEO, Jeff Hirsch CFO, Scott McDonald President of Domestic Networks, Alexson Hoffman and EVP of International, Soprna Kalli. The matters discussed on this call include forward statements, including those regarding the performance of future fiscal years. Such statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially and adversely from those described in the forward looking statements as a result of various factors. This includes the risk factors set forth in Lionsgate's most recent annual report on Form 10 ks as amended in our most recent quarterly report on Form 10 Q filed with the SEC.
The company undertakes no obligation to publicly release the result of any revisions to these forward looking statements that may be made to reflect any future events or circumstances. With that, I'll turn it over to John. John?
Thank you, James, and good afternoon, everyone. We're pleased to report a quarter with strong financials, robust subscriber growth at Starz and another outsized performance from our library as our model continues to show its resilience in the face of the pandemic. Let me take you through the quarter's highlights. Starz continued its strong growth, gaining 800,000 subscribers in the quarter as it increased international over the top subscribers by 26% and posted solid gains in domestic over the top subs. With 28,000,000 global subscribers at quarter's end, we're well on our way to our goal of 50 to 60,000,000 global subscribers by 02/2025, the vast majority of which will be high value streaming subs.
Last week, Stars announced a new bundle agreement with Canoplue that will immediately scale our footprint in France, anticipating a future in which we expect bundles to become an increasingly important part of our distribution strategy. Our production teams have been doing a great job of keeping our television and film pipelines operating at full capacity with safety protocols in place and minimal downtime. Amazingly, in spite of the challenges, we are currently shooting 19 scripted television series and another 20 unscripted shows around the world. Five feature films have returned to production. Three new film productions have started.
And in the coming months, we'll begin shooting the Wonder sequel, White Bird, from director Mark Forster, Shotgun Wedding, starring Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duomel, Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, from superstar producer James l Brooks, Borderlands, teaming Kevin Hart and Kate Blanchett, and John Wick four, of course, starring Keanu Reeves for release next year. Our television group continued its strong year with new series picked up at Starz, Apple Plus, ABC, Fox, and HBO Max. While all six series launched last year have been renewed for second seasons with Love Life breaking out to become the top performing original on HBO Max as we continue to demonstrate our ability to put shows on the air and keep them there. These strong content pipelines continue to feed a library that in the quarter achieved another record $765,000,000 in high margin revenue for the trailing twelve months.
And we've accomplished all of this while continuing to strengthen our balance sheet, ending the quarter with more than $550,000,000 in available cash, an untapped $1,500,000,000 revolver and leverage that has been reduced by more than a full turn in the past year to under 4x, while continuing to fund the growth of all of our businesses without a capital raise and with our own free cash flow. To drill down on our performance in the quarter, I'd like to continue the narrative we began on the last call by laying out three of the broader themes that have contributed to our success. First,
we continue
to mobilize all of our resources behind the growth of Starz. From the acquisition four years ago through the international rollout that began in 02/2018, we've been converting and scaling Starz into a modern data driven global subscription leader that has become the first traditional service to have more over the top than linear subscribers, a critical digital inflection point. By the end of next quarter, we expect streaming revenue to surpass traditional for the first time as well. Domestically, our programming for a broad spectrum of women and traditionally underserved audiences is differentiating us from our competitors, driving subscriber acquisition and retention and setting new viewership records. New series Pea Valley and Hightown and the docuseries Seduced are resonating with our audiences.
Power Book two Ghost set viewership and acquisition records in its first season, becoming the highest performing new series ever on Starz. With its initial season ending on a viewership high, we're bullish on the performance of future seasons as well as upcoming installments of the power franchise, Raising Kanan and Force. We've established ourselves as the go to premium service for grown up audiences. Our brand continues to set us apart in a crowded marketplace, and we have our biggest and most ambitious star slate coming in the year ahead. With the programming and marketing spend informed by the consumer data that we've harvested from our direct to consumer business, we just completed another quarter of high ARPU over the top domestic subscriber growth that drove solid revenue gains while we continue to convert our Comcast linear subscribers into higher value a la carte subs ahead of schedule.
Internationally, we've expanded into 55 countries, including our STARZPLAY Arabia joint venture with launches spanning 10 partners in 20 countries in the quarter. We also continue to bolster consumer data and engagement by rolling out our retail app in another five countries. Our partnerships with global streaming platforms and top local distributors alike are thriving. From Ghost to Gangs of London, Seduced to Spanish Princess, our best of global SVOD content strategy is resonating with consumers, helping to drive our second straight quarter of nearly 30% over the top subscriber growth. We're capitalizing on our early traction by building scale in existing territories while opportunistically expanding into new ones, most recently leveraging the fast start of our Indian platform, Lions Gate Play, into Indonesia.
Second, we continue to accelerate the convergence of our studio and platform businesses to support this growth, whether lining up 20 Lionsgate television premium series for stars, using our library to drive stars' international growth, or leveraging our properties and talent relationships across all of our businesses. This afternoon, we announced that our collaboration with three Arts on The Serpent Queen, the story of French royal Catherine de Medici from Bohemian Rhapsody's Justin Haif, executive produced by Hunger Games franchise director Francis Lawrence and Three Arts Erwin Stauff, has been greenlit at Stars. It's the latest example of our ability to marshal all of the resources within our businesses is critical. Third, we continue to deepen our content pipelines while taking advantage of our distribution optionality. Our strong performance in fiscal twenty twenty one allows us to greatly increase our content and marketing investment in fiscal twenty twenty two to be funded with our own cash flow.
We're responding to the record imbalance between content supply and demand in the marketplace by expanding our slated stars, ramping up our scripted series production at Lions Gate Television, and readying a robust film slate that anticipates theaters coming back next year while addressing huge demand for content across all platforms. Our success in generating strong returns from early PBOD, multiplatform and hybrid models for the films Fetal, Antebellum, Run, I Can Only Imagine, and The Secret speaks to our ability to monetize current films while at the same time working with our theatrical exhibition partners to plan for the future. One full year into the pandemic, our businesses are doing well, adapting to the changes, overcoming the headwinds, and delivering a strong financial performance while creating evergreen value for the future. We owe much of the success to the amazing resilience of our employees and our creative talent family who have doubled down on their collaborative team spirit, innovated new ways of working and communicating, and demonstrated strength and resourcefulness in the face of adversity. Now I'd like to turn things over to Jimmy.
Thanks, John, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll briefly discuss our fiscal third quarter financial results and provide some color on our outlook. The fiscal third quarter adjusted OIBDA was $134,000,000 up 8% over last year and driven by strong performance in television with total revenue coming in at $836,000,000 Reported fully diluted earnings per share was a loss of $06 And fully diluted adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.21 per share. Adjusted free cash flow for the quarter was $111,000,000 Now let me briefly discuss the fiscal third quarter performance of the underlying segments compared to the prior year quarter. You can follow along in our trending schedules that have been posted to our website and show greater detail around our global Media Networks subscribers.
Media Networks quarterly revenue was $4.00 $6,000,000 and segment profit came in at $82,000,000 driven largely by domestic OTT subscriber growth as well as the strong performance of STARZ International as we continue to roll out in new markets and platforms. Globally, including STARZ Play Arabia, the company grew OTT subscribers 900,000 sequentially or 7% as you can see in our trending schedules. Domestically, OTT subscribers increased 3% sequentially while international OTT subscribers grew 26%. Total global media networks OTT subscribers reached 14,600,000 while NVBD subscribers stayed constant at 13,400,000 for a total of 28,000,000 subscribers. We now expect our previous guidance on global media network OTT subscribers to exceed the top end of the 13,000,000 to 15,000,000 subscriber range by the end of the current fiscal year, approaching 50% plus growth year over year.
Now turning to our Motion Picture Group. Revenue declined on limited theatrical releases to $250,000,000 while segment profit of $50,000,000 was in line with the prior year despite a tough comp against the prior year quarter which included ancillary sales of John Wick. And finally, we had strong performance in television where revenue for the quarter came in at $228,000,000 and segment profit increased to $30,000,000 driven by additional Mad Men licensing and episodic deliveries. On the balance sheet, we continue to reduce leverage ending the quarter at 3.6 times trailing adjusted OIBDA or just under three times excluding our investment in STARZPLAY International. We continue to retain significant liquidity with $551,000,000 of cash on hand and a $1,500,000,000 undrawn revolver.
We remain committed to strengthening our balance sheet and paying down debt. Now I'd like to turn the call over to James for Q and A.
Great. Thanks, Jimmy. Carolyn, can we open it up for Q and A?
Absolutely. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Steve Cahill from Wells Fargo. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Maybe, Jimmy, to start off, I was wondering with just about a month left in the fiscal year, could you maybe give us what your outlook is for fiscal 'twenty one? And then John and Jimmy, fiscal 'twenty two is probably going to look a lot different. So could you give us any sense of how we think about both the cadence for fiscal twenty two, but maybe also just as folks are maybe reallocating some budget from in home entertainment to out haul out of home entertainment, and you've got a bit more cost coming online. How do think about the margins in a year like fiscal twenty two? Thanks.
Sure, Steve. Thanks for the question. Look. In terms of fiscal twenty one, as we said from the beginning of the year that fiscal twenty one was gonna be more front end weighted. So as we look ahead to the segments, we continue to see Media Networks segment being flattish relative to the prior year on a full year basis.
And that's as we reinvest excess profits there to derisk the model and position us for future growth. And in Motion Picture Group, as we said before, I think over the remainder of the year, profits will continue to moderate sequentially, particularly with P and A spend on chaos walking as that increases in the fourth quarter. And then in TV, we remain on track for significant growth there. Profits up 50% for the full year, as John's noted in earlier calls. So that kind of rounds out how we would finalize fiscal twenty or what we're seeing there in '21.
'20 '1. And in terms of fiscal twenty two, looking ahead, there we expect the cadence to be more back end loaded, so just the inverse of fiscal 'twenty one. So back end loaded in fiscal 'twenty two, look, we expect strong operational performance in 'twenty two. We're going to be seeing that with increased investment in content and marketing, as you've heard. With regards to the various businesses, looking at STARZ, it'll reflect the impact and the timing of our content marketing spend.
In Motion Picture Group, the P and A spend is going to be more front end loaded here because of the more front end loaded first half theatrical release slate. And then likewise, back end loaded in terms of TV, in terms of episodic deliveries. I would say Weeds is available in the first quarter of this year, fiscal 'twenty '2 that is. So we've got a strong fiscal 'twenty two, and it's back end loaded.
Yes. I'd echo what Jimmy said. I think all of our core businesses won't look that different. I mean, we're going to have a strong library year. We're going to continue to sell into a strong demand.
Our TV business is strong. As I mentioned, we're we've got 39 shows going on right now. And we like the trajectory of our STARZ business, both domestically and internationally. I think it's going to be another strong year, as Jimmy said.
That's a lot of great color. Maybe if I could ask a quick follow-up. You've done a great job of getting leverage down into the 3s. Should we expect that to tick up a little bit in fiscal 'twenty two?
Sure, Steve. Look, you're right. We're down one and a half turns in the first nine months of this year. So 3.6 is a relatively low point at the moment in a favorable way. What I would expect as we go into 2022 with the content spend and marketing spend rolling through, you would expect some increase in margins there to some peak kind of mid early to mid year leverage ratios, but returning back around four times leverage by the end of fiscal twenty twenty two.
That's a good place to be relative to where we are in our investment cycle with content marketing.
Great. Thank you.
Operator, next question please.
Our next question comes from the line of Tim Nolan with Macquarie Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi everyone. Thanks very much. Wanted to ask a question about profitability on the OTT side. If there's any color you could give us. Seeing, the subs, outpacing the linear, a quarter or two ago and now you're seeing revenue outpacing, the linear in the next quarter or two, what are your thoughts on how the profitability profile of the STARZ OTT service stand alone looks like?
Hey, Tim. It's Jeff. Thanks for the question. Now if you look back over the last couple of years as we were primarily a linear network, bundled network with low ARPU subs, and we've converted, as you said, over 50% of our more of our OTT subs than linear subs, and that profitability continues to come up. You look at our ARPU in the last quarter was over $6 I think there's some noise in that number still based on our converting from bundle to a la carte on Comcast.
But we expect long term to be somewhere between the $5.75 dollars and $6 in ARPU. So a much more profitable subscriber as we bring them onto the platform. And then if you look internationally, we still think that we'll end up where we've said publicly somewhere between $3 and $4 when we get out to $20.25 dollars and that's a little bit more of a steeper line as we accelerate the OTT growth in the international side. So overall we're moving to where the consumer is, but we're also moving to a much more profitable customer.
Okay, cool. Thanks, Jeff. Can I ask maybe another one, probably also for you too, Jeff, about the increasing competition we're seeing obviously in OTT? I believe you've done some work looking at your data and trying to figure out what content to make available at what times and how to mitigate churn. I wonder if you've got any comments on churn and your ability to sustain growth given how much more crowded the field continues to get?
It's a great question. I think if you take a step back and when we look at the industry and how it's unfolding, this is probably the first quarter with the exception of Paramount plus that's coming at the March where all the players are kind of on the field right now. And as we've said before, that first big broad based streaming services, the Netflix, the Disney plus the Hulu that are trying to service everybody in the home, I think that's where the real competition is going be. And you're going to see people competing on ad spend, people competing on price, and people competing on bundling. As we announced today, you saw a Canal plus bundle in Europe.
We think we'll see more of that as we go. But we're really positioned, as a complementary service to all those big broadband services. And so we think with our programming strategy of being very focused on a female audience and underserved audiences and building out that slate, As John said, it's most robust slate yet. We think that we've got a really good programming strategy. We've got a great lineup.
And I'm actually going to let Ally talk about the data and how we use that data to schedule and reduce churn to what we're seeing at an all time low in the business right now.
Yes. I think just to comment on the slate, we've got returning franchises like Power. I think we've got three installments of Power coming next year. We've got Outlander coming next year. So in terms of driving subscriber acquisition and in terms of retention, we've got sort of that nice flow of flowing viewers from one show into the next as well as sort of adding and building viewership and building the subscriber base as we go.
We're always per Jeff's note about in terms of the data, we're really always driving to the lowest subscriber acquisition cost. And so that's really how we manage the business. We are managing the business to have a really good return on our marketing investment and a really strong return on our content investment as well.
Great. Could I maybe squeeze one more in, please, also on a similar topic? Know that with STARZ International, you've got a lot of rights to content from the likes of Paramount and Hulu. I wonder if there's anything that we should think about might change given that we'll get some updates on Paramount plus coming in the next couple of weeks or so or indeed anything related to Disney. Just if there's anything on your access to that international content that might change.
I'll have Superna answer that question.
Hi, this is Superna. Thanks for the question.
So we have not
been seeing a problem with securing fantastic content from producers, nor certainly from our own studio. We have incredible content on our own slate that's very international focused and we think are going to drive a lot of subscribers. Just some examples are we're very excited about Serpent Queen, which was announced today, as well as Dangerous Liaisons becoming Elizabeth. And the Power franchise works incredibly well for us. But no, we've not been seeing a slowdown in content acquisitions either.
Great. Thanks.
Our next question comes from the line of Alan Gould from Loop. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking the question. I'm going to do sort of the flip side of Tim's question and address it to Kevin. Kevin, seems that traditional TV is seeing probably change at the most accelerated rate we've seen in terms of ratings and advertising. How does that how does everything play into your job as a producer of content, you know, for all of TV, traditional streaming, etcetera?
Thank you. It's a it's a great question. It's actually never been more of a John touched on our production slate, which includes 13 series for Starz and a dozen more in development, 14 or 15 across the television landscape outside of the Starz landscape family, and the demand is at an all time high. One of our strengths is a very diverse portfolio of producers, writers, IP generators, both from within our own company, you know, amazing brands like John Wick, which we're developing in series with Jeff and his team, and small movies that have become, important mainstays for series like Dear White People. We're in production on Blindspotting for stars right now.
We have a fantastic partnership with the BBC that's yielded, two pilots this season and one series order. So the demand is high, and everyone wants premium, high end scripted programming. It's what we've been doing for twenty plus years at Lionsgate as our own special lane. And now that lane, everyone wants to crowd or expand into a four lane freeway, but very easy for us to do so.
Okay. If I could just, follow-up for either John or Jeff. I was reading a trade article from STARZPLAY International. It was talking about possibly doing an IPO in the next few years. Is that the plan on STARZPLAY International?
I was quoting the CEO in a in a
Yeah. Arab News article. Yeah. Look. We feel really great about our STARZPLAY.
Arabia, you know, we're 32%. We have a we're a controlling shareholder with approval rights. They continue to be the market leader. We feel good about what they've built. They've secured a local loan from RUIA, which is really a validation of how great they're doing in the marketplace.
We do have, obviously, the rights consolidate, and we'll continue to look at the business. And when we think it's the right thing to do in the right time, then we'll look at that as an option.
Thanks, Jeff.
And our next question comes from the line of Thomas Yeh from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks. A quick question for Jeff. You mentioned that there's some ARPU trend impact as we move through the Comcast subscriber transition and last one year anniversary there. More broadly, it looks like there's been some continued stabilization on traditional linear stores trends.
Is there anything you would call out there about underlying drivers that's supporting uptake despite, you know, broader cord cutting at the industry level?
It's a great question. I would say a few things to remind everybody that, you know, we're not a fully distributed ad supported network. And so we have a lot of penetration room on our traditional MVPD partners. And so we think that there's great, again, great opportunity for us to grow on the traditional side with our audience as well as on the OTT side. I'll also remind everybody that by the end of this fiscal we'll be at 80% a la carte on the traditional side.
So that's really de risked the traditional business. It's put the incentives aligned with our partners to grow the business together. And as our content slate continues to outperform on their platforms, we're growing together. And I think the really great thing about that is those are customers who are actually seeking out stars and choosing stars. So they're a much stickier customer and so churn is also coming down.
So I think we have an opportunity both to grow on the fast and more profitable side on the OTT side, but also on the traditional business with our traditional partners.
Okay, great. And then just quickly on the film strategy. I'm wondering if you could update us on your views of taking films through their premium VOD window. Is there a right sized film or any puts and takes that helps determine what path a film might take in terms of monetization going forward?
Yeah. Sure. This is Joe. Thanks for the question. I guess what I would say to you is that, you know, we have we talked a lot about it, adopted what we're calling a platform agnostic approach to distributing film.
We're looking at the theater business, and we do think that theaters will get open by this summer, maybe earlier. We're primed for that. And at the same time, we've had a number of experiences now in the PVOD space. And what I would say is that I we are seeing, multiple, multiple opportunities or multiple options for distribution of each title. That's the way we greenlight our titles now.
We look at we look at the Theat Velocity. We look at PVOD. We look at other models, theatrical to PVOD, and green light on that basis, and we're just seeing more opportunity than ever before. So I don't think it's a I don't think it's a right sized film for that model. I think it just has to do with, you know, what film, what customers are you trying to reach, where are those customers, what's available in the marketplace at the time.
We have, we reorganized our our our overall structure internally to really bring all those groups together. What I can tell you is that, our distribution and marketing teams are working like never before across every model and, and unlocking a ton of value.
Okay, great. Thank you both.
Next question, Carolyn?
Our next question comes from the line of Jim Goss from Barrington Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Jim?
Okay. Thanks. A couple of questions. One, regarding the film slate and the you made an interesting point about sort of John Wick maybe perhaps being fodder for a series. Do you see more and more opportunity for increasing interplay between the film and TV production, especially since Starz has been, you know, improving its presence?
Absolutely. Look. We you've heard us talk about Lions Gate three sixty a lot over the last couple of years. We are we are very, very integrated across this entire company. And so whether when we're making a movie, when TV is buying a buying rights to a television series, we have a regular group that meets and looks at each piece of content in terms of how we can maximize it across every every piece of our platform.
I think John Wick and the Continental series is a great example of that, but there's there are a number of properties. Sixteen nineteen is a great example of that where we're working together, to make sure that we're maximizing the right. Blind spotting. Yeah. So there's it's a it's sort of a regular part of our business, and I think something that we do better, than any than anybody out there because we are so integrated, we work in a way that I think that where I think you find silos in other places, think this organization is really reaping the benefits of that level of integration and collaboration.
Okay. And then with regard to STARS, as you've been able to increase its profile globally as well as domestically, can you talk about the consistency of the programming in domestic markets versus the various international markets? Are you able to leverage a lot of the programming? Do you have to have a lot of unique content in each one to make that work? And, also, you mentioned that STARZ, I think, had a lot of, complementary positioning relative to some of the other services.
Does that do you feel that creates a better runway? Or are you starting to get STARS as a first buy in more cases as you've developed a better identity than you had originally?
Good question. So I think first and foremost, the international expansion is really predicated on leaning on the domestic business as a foundational element. And so the slate, as we continue to increase the marketing and the spending on domestic content, it has to work globally. And so if you look at, Girlfriend Experience is a perfect example. You know, that had been a domestic show.
We had moved the storyline to London with a very international cast, with a very international storyline. That should work all over the world. The Power franchise is one of the best performing shows in The UK and in France and in some markets in LatAm. And so as we look at putting shows on the domestic network, we're always looking at how does that play internationally. But we also know that some of those shows won't play internationally.
So we are augmenting those shows with third party purchases from other partners domestically. And I would say also, I think the really unique industrial logic about putting the companies together is the ability to lean into the whether Joe just talked about the motion picture IP to put content on the air in terms of series, it's blind spotting on the Continental, leaning in with Kevin on some of the library or our originals that we're producing out of Spain, out of India, out of LatAm to really supplement our global content footprint. And so I feel like the slate's really gonna work around the world and will augment where we need to.
Okay, thanks. Appreciate it.
Thanks Jim.
Our next question comes from the line of Kudkin Morrow from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. Two if I could. First, in terms of the increased investment in content marketing you expect across the core business in 2022, can you provide more color on where you see the greatest opportunity to lean into in terms of stars, television, or motion pictures? And then if you could kinda help frame the magnitude of the increase you're thinking about.
I I guess since fiscal twenty one has been so disrupted with COVID, how do we think about the path ahead relative to maybe fiscal nineteen or pre pandemic fiscal twenty twenty levels? And then I have a follow-up on STARS.
Sure. Thanks. Well, absolutely. I mean, speaking of, pre pandemic levels, you know, I would expect the content marketing spend as a percentage of revenues to be pretty much in line with, with what we incurred in fiscal twenty as an example. Across all our businesses, we're finding motion picture TV and Starz great opportunities to drive revenue and secure our future with investments across all three of the business units.
So overall, that's driving increased revenues. So I would expect the overall impact on net profits to be modest.
Understood. Okay, that's very helpful. Thanks. And then if I could on STAR's domestic OTT. In the quarter, net adds of, I think, about 300,000 seemed to be a bit of a deceleration versus the earlier days of COVID when you had, of course, the very robust transfer and the pull forward of demand.
I guess, you know, up until this point, you've grown that subscriber base so impressively. Going forward, is this quarter's pace what you see as maybe the new normal range of STARZ domestic OTT net adds that we should expect going forward?
You know, it's a great question. We had a really big quarter, last quarter, but that was, I think, driven more from the content that we had on the air. We had two monster hits with Pea Valley and the premier of Ghost in last quarter, and we saw great subscriber growth there. If you go back in history and you look at every time we put the Power franchise on, we'd see these really spikes of big quarters. This quarter, we had, some of our smaller shows on, and so you saw the growth slow a bit.
But we expect fourth quarter globally to look much more like second quarter in terms of the cadence of subscriber gains. And then as John said in his prepared remarks, you know, we're coming to our most robust and fully complete slate that we've ever had in the business with, you know, three power shows, Pea Valley coming back, Hightown coming back, a bunch of new content that, you know, we're about to announce. And so it's our best and most complete slate. And so you'll see acceleration in growth, but also we've scheduled this, and Ali can talk about it in a minute. We scheduled it to help reduce churn.
And so as we fill out two shows on the air every week, fifty two weeks a year, we should continue to see churn come down to an all time low and accelerate the business even more on the front end. Emily, do want to add anything on that?
Yes. No, just we will
be consistently on the air with shows for women and underrepresented audiences next year. And just to repeat what Jeff said, three installments of the Power franchise and also Outlander happening next year in addition to a slate of other new series that we really have great expectations for.
Thank you so much.
And our next question comes from the line of Alexia Quadrani from JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you. I wanted to follow-up on your hey there. How are guys doing? I wanted to follow-up on your earlier comments about distribution, you know, theatrical versus streaming, and just dig into that a little bit further.
You know, ultimately I guess when the pandemic is behind us, I'm curious to how you see, you know, the distribution sort of platform. How much has it changed in terms of, you know, the decision of how much goes to, you know, traditional box office versus streaming? And also if you have any color on how maybe the economics of the various outlets, you know, impact your business? And then I have a follow-up.
Sure, Alexia. So, what I would say to you is that, much like STARZ, we're moving you know, we've leaned heavily into content. We will have, over 40 films across all of our various distribution platforms that will be released into '22, and that should grow again into '23. And that's a reflection of, one, our expectation that the theatrical market is gonna come back, but that these opportunities that we're taking advantage of now, these new windows, these new ways of distributing consumers, consuming in a different way, and platform appetite downstream, we think what we have is an environment where there's actually added opportunity. It's not one versus the other.
And so we, you know, we leaned into content accordingly. We structured the business accordingly. As it relates to the metrics, certainly, what we've seen in the last year is that when you are able to collapse some of these windows, you move quickly from theatrical to into Pvot or directly into Pvot into Pvot and then move up some of your other windows depending on the particular film, what you're do and you can also gear marketing spending differently. We've been able to be more efficient in certain cases with our marketing spend. We've been able to accelerate cash turn in some of these new models.
And so it's actually improved our metrics on our films that are released in these alternative models. We've also along with that, the the team we call segment two, our home entertainment team that does this business, has actually accelerated, you know, they've increased the volume of content because they're seeing a ton of opportunity. So, it's the the
metric