Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Lions gate Entertainment fiscal Q2 2021 earnings call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will have a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press one then zero at any time during today's call. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Executive Vice President of Investor Relations, James Marsh. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for the Lionsgate's fiscal 2021 Q2 conference call. We'll begin with opening remarks from our CEO, Jon Feltheimer, followed by remarks from our Vice Chairman, Michael Burns, and CFO, Jimmy Barge. After the remarks, we will open the call for questions. Joining us on the call today are COO Brian Goldsmith, Chairman of the TV Group, Kevin Beggs, and Chairman of the Motion Picture Group, Joe Drake. From Starz, we have President and CEO Jeff Hirsch, CFO Scott Macdonald, and EVP of International, Superna Kalle. The matters discussed on this call include forward-looking 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-K, 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 Jon. Jon?
Thank you, James, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us. We're pleased to report another strong quarter. Strong in financial results, strong in acceleration of our key non-financial metrics, and strong in its affirmation of the business plan we created four years ago with the acquisition of Starz and our pivot to the streaming world. Let me give you a few of the highlights. Starz just reported its best domestic over-the-top subscriber growth quarter ever. Domestic streaming subs have increased from 7.4 million - 9.2 million over the past three months on the strength of a focused content strategy and the launch of successful new series. Our new shows are not only driving subscriber growth but boosting subscriber retention with record levels of engagement.
Starz International Business also achieved record over-the-top subscriber growth in the quarter, following strong content and distribution launches in the U.K., Brazil, and other key territories throughout its global footprint. Our best of global SVODs content strategy is resonating with consumers, while our partnerships with top global streaming platforms and local distributors are global streaming subscribers at the end of the quarter, including 800,000 from our Pantaya Spanish-language platform. Having achieved our target of 13 million-15 million global streaming subscribers a full six months early, we expect to end the year at the high end of that range. In another great quarter for our library, we reported a record $738 million in high-margin library revenue for the trailing 12 months, up 33% from the prior 12 months.
While we continue to deliver this content efficiently to an expanding array of platforms, it still serves as a cornerstone for the accelerating growth of Starz. I'm also pleased to report that the content businesses that refresh our library are back in production. In television, we have over 12 scripted series and more than 20 unscripted shows back up and running safely and efficiently. In a world of vertically integrated buyers, we are an effective and profitable third-party supplier of choice, while continuing to ramp up our supply of premium series for Starz. In our feature film business, we saw a massive imbalance between content supply and demand and responded quickly by green-lighting eight films in the past six months. One has already wrapped, four more are currently shooting, and three others are slated to begin production early next year.
As the theatrical business continues to pivot to new paradigms of distribution and monetization, we're prepared. Our slate has all the ingredients to resonate at the theatrical box office, while our organization has the agility to successfully embrace alternative release strategies when needed, as we did with Antebellum, Run, and The Secret. We accomplished all this while executing on our commitment to de-lever and strengthen our balance sheet, reducing our leverage ratio by over one and a half turns in the past 12 months. We ended the quarter with more than $450 million in cash on hand. Today, I want to widen the aperture and speak to the strategic vision of Lionsgate, giving you an update on what we've accomplished so far, where we're going from here, and laying out a roadmap for the future to help you chart our progress.
When I finish, Michael will share a few thoughts on the value we're creating across our businesses. Since we acquired Starz, we've been refining and repurposing our model to help us to do three things: accelerate our growth, capitalize on our resilience, and successfully converge our studio and platform businesses. Let me talk about all three. First, we began pivoting Starz towards the direct-to-consumer sweet spot of industry growth four years ago. Today, I'm pleased to report that we have reached a major inflection point six months ahead of schedule, as our global over-the-top subscribers passed our MVPD subs for the first time in the quarter. We expect over-the-top revenues and profits to soon follow subscribers across this milestone as we continue to transition from a primarily wholesale licensing model to a more global, data-driven, direct-to-consumer world.
At the same time, we're working with our MVPD partners to transition our traditional business to a mutually beneficial a la carte model that allows us to bring greater stability to our business and to better control our own destiny. Digital or linear, we've positioned our platform for faster growth while also reducing our risk. Second, our model is proving to be resilient, both in ways that we planned for, as well as in ways we never imagined. While significant portions of our industry are impacted by skyrocketing costs for sports rights, closed theme parks, and exposure to a bearish ad market, our diversified model is delivering consistency and growth, even in the face of unprecedented change. Starz continues to build on its premium global streaming leadership. Our content businesses are finding new buyers and creating new paradigms, and our library has become more valuable than ever.
Finally, I'd like to highlight how the individual pieces of our model are coming together. The convergence of our studio and platform begins with getting close to talent in our 3 Arts business. It continues with a television group that has more than 20 premium television series lined up for Starz, and a film business that is already in the process of rethinking the financial and strategic priorities for its output deals coming up for renewal. As our 17,000-title film and television library continues to experience outsized growth, it will become an ever more important driver of this convergence. All of our businesses are aligning nicely behind a streaming platform that just reported its best OTT subscriber growth ever, and we expect that growth to continue. In closing, as we navigate the new normal, we continue to learn as we go.
We bring to this opportunity a forward-looking business model, strong content slates, a streaming business that has reached a major inflection point, a healthy balance sheet, and a resilient culture that is rising to the challenge of these extraordinary times. Now I'd like to turn things over to Michael.
Thanks, Jon. I want to share a few thoughts about the disconnect between what we've been building and the recognition of that value in our stock price. I believe that our growth opportunities are a big part of our value creation story. Today, I'd like to highlight three areas in which we saw strong growth in the quarter and expect it to continue. First, our streaming business. We're continuing our steady march to better unit economics and a more sustainable subscriber base at Starz. We're six months ahead of schedule in reaching our target of 13 million-15 million global streaming subscribers, and we expect to continue our strong growth trajectory to 15 million-25 million international subscribers, giving us 40 million-50 million subs worldwide by 2025. This growth is being supercharged by the wealth of data that we've been harvesting from our direct subs.
The overwhelming majority of the subscribers will be over-the-top subscribers that generate more revenue and have a higher value, and they will continue to enhance our opportunity to be part of many OTT bundles while aligning ourselves with every kind of platform. This streaming growth is being driven by three key elements. Our focused domestic and international programming strategy has been carefully planned and executed, and most importantly, it is working. Our partnerships with global streaming platforms and local distributors alike, and the bundling opportunity that these partnerships are creating, continue to accelerate this growth. Our disciplined strategy is allowing us to convert a great headstart into sustainable and replicable long-term performance. Now I'd like to talk a minute about our library. Our library's unprecedented performance isn't a one-time phenomenon associated with people watching more content at home.
It's the result of many years of disciplined organic growth and strategic accretive acquisitions. We've had over 500 additional titles generate revenue in fiscal 2020 than in 2019. We've seen top-line growth for four of the last five years. Our library is big, fresh, growing in size, and most importantly, growing in value. As a case in point, our most recent library licensing initiative with key titles like Knives Out and Twilight had price increases of nearly 60% compared to just a year ago. This result can be replicated again and again with high-revenue, high-margin deals across a wide array of library titles as the number of platforms licensing our content continues to expand. As this expansion continues, we believe the value of our library is fast approaching the entire enterprise value of the company. Finally, our franchises.
We're constantly renewing and refreshing our major brands and franchises. We're quickly moving towards production of fresh installments of "John Wick," "Knives Out," "Now You See Me," and the "Hunger Games" prequel based on Suzanne Collins' runaway bestseller, "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes." We are rebooting "Dirty Dancing" in a nostalgic and romantic movie starring Jennifer Grey that will delight the fans of our best-selling library title. We've just green-lit "White Bird," a follow-up to our global hit, "Wonder," and "Borderlands" based on the blockbuster video game franchise. We continue to successfully expand our Power Universe, which has turned into a global hit. These are world-class brands that will drive opportunities across all of our businesses.
The continued renewal of our most iconic content replenishes our library, which in turn supports the global growth of Starz, a cycle of growth that will continue to enhance the benefits of the convergence of our studio and platform businesses. Most importantly, we are growing these businesses through efficient capital allocation, utilizing our own free cash flow as we continue the de-levering that Jon spoke about a moment ago, and we will continue to do so. Now I'd like to turn things over to Jimmy.
Thanks, Michael, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll briefly discuss our fiscal Q2 financial results and provide some color on our outlook. Fiscal Q2 adjusted OIBDA was $156 million, driven by continued strong Motion Picture Group segment profit performance and record demand for library, with total revenue coming in at $745 million. Reported fully diluted earnings per share was a loss of $0.08 per share, and fully diluted adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.33 per share. Adjusted free cash flow for the quarter was $113 million. Now let me briefly discuss the fiscal Q2 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 $388 million, and segment profit came in at $93 million, driven largely by domestic OTT subscriber growth, as well as the strong performance of Starz International as we continue to roll out in new territories. Globally, including Starzplay Arabia, the company grew subscribers 2.1 million sequentially, or more than 8%, as you can see from our trending schedules. Domestically, OTT subscribers increased 24% sequentially, while international OTT subscribers grew 36%. Total global Media Networks OTT subscribers reached 13.7 million, exceeding our global 13.4 million MVPD subscribers for the first time ever, highlighting the inflection point in transitioning our model. We would expect revenues to follow this trend, with the majority coming from OTT as soon as our fiscal Q4, with profits to follow sometime after.
We believe we will continue to be an industry leader in the transition to direct-to-consumer and expect between 25%-30% of our total consolidated revenue to come from direct-to-consumer by the end of calendar 2022, more than any other traditional media company. In addition, as Jon mentioned, we've already achieved the midpoint of our full-year global OTT subscriber range six months into the year. Accordingly, we expect to be at the top end of the 13 million-15 million range by the end of the fiscal year, representing 40%+ growth year-over-year. Turning to our Motion Picture Group.
As expected, revenue declined to $258 million as a result of the theater closures and only one premium video on demand release in the quarter, combined with tough comps against last year's strong ancillary performance of "John Wick: Chapter Three." Segment profit came in at $83 million, driven by lower P&A spend and record demand for high-margin library, which is indicative of the increasing value of our content. Finally, television revenue for the quarter came in at $197 million, while segment profit was $10 million, driven by contributions from "P-Valley" and "Spanish Princess." On the balance sheet, we continued to reduce leverage, ending the quarter at 3.9 x adjusted to OIBDA, or 3.1 x excluding our investment in Starzplay International. We continue to build significant liquidity with more than $450 million of cash on hand and a $1.5 billion undrawn revolver.
I would also like to remind you that we have no maturities before the end of fiscal 2023. We remain committed to strengthening our balance sheet and paying down debt. We remain very comfortable with all of our covenants based on our revised forecast and having further stress tested them for longer production and theatrical delays, as well as the potential negative impact of a recession. I'd like to turn the call over to James for Q&A.
Thanks, Jimmy. Ryan, we can open up questions now.
Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press one, then zero at this time. Once again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press one, zero. Our first question will come from the line of Thomas Yeh. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks. Congrats on the stellar results. Netflix has talked about a pull-forward effect on their subscriber growth, given the extraordinary shift to streaming that we've seen this year. Can you maybe share some of the characteristics of the new customer joins that you've seen, and any insights about retention or usage of that cohort? What do you think is the next driver for the next leg of growth? Then secondly, on Motion Picture, in light of the recent news of restructuring this morning, can you share your updated views on how COVID has structurally changed the studio business and how much of that might be permanent or a strategic shift going forward? Thank you.
Yeah. Hey, it's Jeff. Thanks for the question. I think first and foremost, what really drives great subscriber acquisition and growth is great content. We launched three new shows in the quarter that had outside success. Our first Power Universe spinoff, "Ghost," performed about 42% higher than the last season of Power. We're really thrilled with the success there. Spanish Princess continued to have great success coming back in season two. We saw a spillover from our freshman series, P-Valley, that's really performed much better than we thought, and it's an outside hit right now. We've seen great acquisition. Our cost per acquisition has come down significantly as the content has continued to come on. We've also seen churn, both domestically and internationally, come down to all-time lows. We feel really good about the trajectory of the business.
As Jon has said in his prepared remarks, we think we'll end the year at the high end of the range, and we feel great about it.
Yeah. Thomas, this is Joe. Thank you for the question. Look, the restructure today was a little bit about COVID, for sure, but mostly about the idea that changes and shifts that were happening before COVID have only accelerated. Jon mentioned a historic, really, imbalance between supply and demand with supply dwindling. Production starts for most companies are down. Stocks on shelves are down while the appetite is really skyrocketing. The new windows that people were talking about have only accelerated, and this has created real distribution opportunities for us. When we went into work from home, we started to look at what the future was going to look like. For us, it was about really strategically aligning to capture what we expect it to be and we're now certainly seeing as real new opportunities to monetize our content.
Your question about whether they're sustainable, I would tell you that many of the changes, I think the supply-demand curve is going to be in favor of content suppliers for a long time. Windows are going to continue to evolve. We just see a ton of opportunity moving forward in our business.
Great. Thanks, Thomas. Ryan, next question, please.
Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press one then zero. Our next question comes from the line of Alan Gould. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking the question. Two questions. One, can you discuss your thoughts these days on theatrical windows? Second, for Jimmy, can you discuss how we should start thinking of cash flow a year out when you start spending and investing cash more on productions and there's not quite as much of a back end coming in given the drought that COVID has caused this year?
Sure, Alan. Look, on theatrical windows, it's a really interesting question. We do fully expect the theatrical business to come back. Probably it's not going to look exactly like what it looked like before we went into COVID. I don't know exactly the timing of it. To add on to what I was saying earlier, I think theatrical windows are shifting, but I think windows up and down the revenue stream are shifting. What it is actually creating is just more optionality and more opportunity and different ways to monetize content. Michael talked about the value of library and the shift in value there. What we're seeing is that monetizing in these new windows, whether it is leading with theatrical, whether it's going to be theatrical and PVOD combined, or whether you go direct to PVOD or other ways of exploiting.
For sure, demand is up, supply is down, and the values are there for us to go and monetize.
Thanks, Alan, for the question. Well, for sure, you can see that we've generated strong free cash flow the H1 of this year. We've delevered 1.3x in the H1, really strong there. I would say, in terms of the Motion Picture Group changes and just the dynamics here that Joe's talked about is, it's becoming really a less capital-intensive business, where we're able to drive cash flows earlier in the curve. Certainly, we're generating strong positive cash flows, expect to continue to do so. We're fully investing in our content, not only ultimately in a re-ramp on the theatrical side of the business, but also in TV, in Starz content, and don't forget, we're fully funding the investment in Starzplay International. I would expect that as we go forward, we're going to continue to fully fund the business.
I think the cash flows are going to continue to be strong, and we'll obviously be ramping a lot of that up for future growth. We've already been ramping up content spend. I think we're in really good shape, and we've delevered substantially, as you can tell already.
Thanks so much, Joe and Jimmy.
Great. Thanks, Alan.
Our next question will come from the line of Alexia Quadrani. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, this is Anna on for Alexia. Thank you so much for the question. I was just wondering if you can provide us with an update on your recent progress in production, both domestically and internationally.
Sure.
Are you asking a question about theatrical or television or what?
Those are both.
If you can touch on things, that would be great.
Sure. We'll start with Kevin.
Hey, thanks for asking the question. The outcome of the presidential election is not clear, but one thing I know we're doing is making boatloads of television. We are back in full production on 12 shows right now, moving to 20 by next March, and more orders to come. We just had a nice announcement last week with Fox.
That doesn't include non-fiction.
Well, yes. Another 20 non-fiction productions on top of that. Our focus, of course, is growing our Starz business. We now have 12 shows together, that I touched on, and more coming. It's a great contrast to where we were even over a year and a half ago when we had one together. We feel that working closely with our partners really gives us a strategic advantage in the industry. Together, we got back to production four to six weeks ahead of our studio competitors, and the results that Jeff touched on about the shows working, I think, speak for themselves. We have a really robust third-party business as well with HBO Max and Showtime and our broadcast partners all across the business. We're moving into production. COVID has been a road bump, a speed bump, but it is not slowing us down ultimately.
I would say the same is true of the feature business. We made it a strategic priority between the whole company to be back to production early and fast and ahead of many of our competitors with state-of-the-art COVID protocols. We've done that. As Jon mentioned, we've recently green-lit eight films. We finished one recently. We've got five in production right now, another five that'll go in production over the next four or five months. They're movies that are chosen across the spectrum to serve different audiences and have the optionality on a variety of release strategies and platforms. We're leaning in heavily in the space and expect to be able to continue to do so.
Great. Thanks so much.
Thanks, Anna.
Our next question will come from the line of Jim Goss. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks. A little bit more on the notion of what you do with your films in the absence of a theatrical window at the moment. There have been some examples that seem to suggest that there'd be willingness to sell a film into a streaming service for a fairly substantial amount, but it would seem like you would need to do more than cover your costs or why bother taking the risks. I'm wondering how you value that calculation, and would any sale to a streaming service in lieu of a theatrical window be for a specific window with retention of future rights?
Thank you for the question, Jim. I think that the way to start to that is that when we're looking at green-lighting a film today, we go through a process. We look at it, frankly, on a platform-agnostic basis. We create a strategy and plan and model for a theatrical release, for a combined theatrical PVOD release, PVOD only, and a number of other scenarios, including streaming sale, whether that be globally, certain territories, certain rights. The thing to really take away here is that whether you're a stream or most downstream platforms acquire films in a whole variety of fashions, and a majority of what they ultimately broadcast is acquired in one form or another, and we're a supplier of that content. What we're doing is looking at all of the various opportunities and measuring those against how do we maximize the value of that film?
How do we use that film to bifurcate rights and maximize the value of library? How do we grow our brands? The silver lining in this moment is that between the shift in supply and demand and new windowing strategies and distribution optionality, we're able to have a variety of options for each piece of content. Which is, just to kind of go back to the first question I was asked, part of our restructuring was to take 10 groups and turn them into four distinct verticals that are built around skill sets, so that our executives here live across the life cycle of a film. We're able to have subject matter experts live regardless of platform, regardless of how we're going to monetize it, live across that whole life cycle of film, and it's helping us move faster, make better decisions, and unlock more value.
Okay. One other thing, sort of an ancillary notion. You've had some pretty good demonstrated success in the past with contributing to the success of Netflix and AMC with some of the series you've created. I'm wondering how you approach those sort of things as you come up with ideas now in terms of how long the retention of rights is to those, I know there's not one question or one version of all of this, but how are you looking at how long you would dedicate those rights to whatever service you sold content to and then making that decision whether you put it on Starz?
This is Jon, Jim. I'll answer this question, refer it back to your last question, which is, it's kind of a pretty simple calculus for us. The longer we're going to let a third party other than Starz hold on to the content, the more the upfront return has to be, the higher the ROI has to be. Again, we calculate that. It's very rare that we will give up rights for a very long period of time. Again, it's interesting, you might say, "Well, why don't you produce everything for Starz?" Well, the fact of the matter is Starz is a very specific focus premium channel. If something is right for Starz, obviously that's where we would like it to be. We service many other platforms for a number of reasons. One is obviously for profitability.
Two is because we're so active, we have so much scale in the television business that it puts us in play with talent every day, not just through 3 Arts, which is a huge competitive advantage. By being so active in the business and business with so many writers, Starz, it gives us, again, a lot of optionality. Again, we always would love to serve Starz, and a hit on Starz is worth $1 billion, a big hit. This gives us a lot of optionality. Again, as I say, the longer we're going to give the rights to somebody else, and again, we always get them back, the longer we'll give any right to someone else, we would demand a higher profitability, a better ROI up front.
All right, great way to think about it. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Jim.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press one then zero. Our next question will come from the line of Kutgun Maral. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you. Not a novel question perhaps, but I wanted to ask about your updated perspectives on industry consolidation and where Lionsgate might fit into that. I think there are plenty of strategic merits for M&A in the context of how rapidly the ecosystem is evolving, as we're all aware. Perhaps in addition to that, as the pandemic and its knock-on effects have continued to ripple through, has your thinking on M&A evolved, whether it's across the premium network business or TV and film studios?
I'd answer it this way. Obviously, we don't tend to talk about M&A. We've been pretty consistent in the past looking at certainly bolt-on acquisitions, particularly, again, we love libraries. You see these library numbers. Most of the latest increase has been organic, if you will, but we're always looking for bolt-on transactions. I would say overall, we have everything that we need right now to be very effective building two sides of our business, the studio side, including library and the Starz side. I will tell you that Michael and myself and a number of the key executives here, Brian Goldsmith, are always looking at everything.
I think if there are opportunities, I would say particularly if because of some of the consolidation at a very high level that has happened recently, if some pieces of other people's business fall out, I can promise you, again, we've got a lot of powder dry right now. We've got a lot of cash on our balance sheet. I can promise you, we will look at everything, and if it's accretive and most importantly if it's strategic, I think we will hope to take advantage of it.
Understood. Thanks so much. I only ask just because a lot of chatter on certain deals seems to have died down a bit for a variety of reasons, but one would think that as we've seen some pressure elsewhere across your peers perhaps, certain deals can make sense. I appreciate the perspectives.
Okay. Thank you.
We have no further questions in queue. Please continue.
Great. Thanks, Ryan. I'd like to thank everybody for joining us on the call today, and please refer to our press releases and events tab under the investor relations section of the company's website for a discussion of certain non-GAAP forward-looking measures discussed on this call today. Thank you again for joining us.
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.