Sports-focused virtual pay TV provider fuboTV doubled its paid TV subscribers to near one million in the third quarter, along with sharply higher revenues. But investors, including one analyst, aren’t happy.
The company’s revenue was sharply higher -- up 156% to $156.7 million. In addition, the company trimmed its net loss to $105.9 million from $274.1 million in the third quarter of 2020.But that loss was still more than what analysts expected. After-hours trading of the stock on Tuesday witnessed fuboTV’s stock dropping 8.1% to $30.45.
Subscription revenue -- which makes up the biggest part of its business -- grew 158% to $138.1 million.
A large part of this came from rising average revenue per user per month -- up 10% to $74.54 versus the same period a year ago.
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Ad revenue rose at nearly the same rate -- 147% -- to $18.6 million, with advertising ARPU -- the average revenue per user per month -- 10% higher to $8.23.
Richard Greenfield, media analyst of LightShed Partners, in a report on Tuesday wondered how the company can succeed when other veteran, hard-pressed pay TV providers are suffering.
"We are seeing MVPDs/vMVPDs dropping more networks because the math simply does not make sense... [But] Fubo is spinning a story that they have found the 'magic elixir' of the media sector."
He adds: "They 'supposedly' have subscribers that are watching more and more linear TV and are happy to pay ever higher prices, as Fubo jams in lightly-watched expensive channels that larger companies could no longer afford."
With regard to its advertising growth in the connected TV space, Greenfield says: “Connected TV advertising is soaring, but Fubo is too small to matter.”
FuboTV projects 2021 revenue to be $612 million to $617 million -- which would be a 135% increase versus the year before -- as well as landing at between 1.06 million and 1.07 million subscribers by year’s end.
Streaming content hours grew 113% to 284 million in the period, the company says.