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STARZ - Power Book III: Raising Kanan (Season 3)



Jon Feltheimer -- Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Nilay, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I'd like to begin with a few highlights from a strong financial quarter and then drill down in each of our businesses.

Turning to our individual businesses, it was a strong financial quarter for Starz, but like the rest of the industry, we were impacted by a reduction in at-home viewership; and importantly, a light content quarter, due to COVID driven production delays.

We continue to grow our base of international subscribers in the quarter, but domestic subscribers declined, a temporary drop that we have already reversed since the end of the quarter. In fact, two weeks after the quarter ended, Power Book III: Raising Kanan debut to the second biggest Starz original series premiere ever, driving over 800,000 global subscriber gross ads in the first week alone and an 80% spike in viewership on the app.

As a result, we are again growing our domestic over-the-top subscriber base, which is already back to the March quarter's record levels. And with our biggest and strongest Starz Original Series slate ever this year, with 12 scripted series compared to seven last year and a building cadence of five tent-pole Series over the next three quarters, we continue to expect Starz's global subscriber growth this year to outpace subscriber growth last year.

Our confidence is buttressed by a very strong slate that following Raising Kanan includes, wrestling drama Heels starring Stephen Amell and Alexander Ludwig, getting great early reviews; the second season of the hit series Power Book II: Ghost; the sixth season of fan-favorite Outlander; Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson's crime family drama BMF; the horror comedy Shining Vale, starring Courteney Cox; and the debut of Power Book IV: Force.

These will be followed next season by high-end properties such as, the Watergate drama Gaslit, starring Julia Roberts and Sean Penn; the John Wick Prequel, The Continental; and The Serpent Queen, based on the dark legend of Catherine de' Medici.

Internationally, subscriber growth continued, but was slowed by a light content quarter as well as the global reopening. Here again, we've seen a significant subscriber uptick with the international launch of Raising Kanan which along with Ghost, Run The World and The Girlfriend Experience proves that great programming for our core audiences in the United States attracts a global audience as well.

Combined with Lionsgate feature films and library titles that are driving our theatrical content offering and best in class third-party acquisitions of The Great, Gangs of London, and the International premiere of Dr. Death later this quarter, our best of global SVOD programming continues to set us apart as a home for original, adult, fiercely premium content, complimentary to every platform and a compelling value proposition for every bundle.

The next question will come from Steven Cahall with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Steven Cahall -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

Thanks. Maybe a couple for Jeff, so on Starz, could you just unpack that subscriber forecast a little bit about adding more subscribers this year than last. I know you have a big content pipeline coming in the rest of the fiscal year, it just seems like a lot of what we've seen in streaming is that the pandemic might have provided some pull forward. So just curious what gives you the confidence that, now that we're coming out of the pandemic you'll be able to have as strong a year for net ads, as you did last year?

And then, related on Starz International, how should we just think about segment profit for that segment this year? I think maybe you've talked about it on a profitability basis looking similar to last year, just didn't know if there was any update to that outlook. Thanks.

Jeffrey Hirsch -- President and Chief Executive Officer of Starz

Hey Steve. How are you? Yeah -- Great, as Jon and Jimmy talked in their remarks of the very light content quarter for us, we premiered two half hour comedies that were great shows that I think that coupled with the world opening back up, it was not our strongest quarter as we had guided on the last call.

But as they said also on their prepared remarks, we're very confident that this year will be stronger than last year. We're going from seven originals to 12 originals. We have five tent poles in the next three quarters that drive a large, large growth of subscriber acquisition. We also saw our churn at a historic low in this quarter.

So those two things coupled together give us great confidence, that we can -- we will accelerate growth this year, Kanan obviously premiered, as Jon said in his prepared remarks to huge numbers, huge viewership. And simply put, if Kanan was six weeks earlier, we will be having a different sequential conversation than we're having right now.

James W. Barge -- Chief Financial Officer

And on the segment profit portion of things Steven, yeah you're right, plus or minus in line with the prior year investment. And that's really based off the timing of content etc. We like what we're doing there. We like the market share we're capturing. We're leaning into it.

Lions Gate Entertainment Corp (LGF.A) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript | The Motley Fool
 
Marvin retelling the story

o8_O7Z.gif

Bwahahaha!! LMAO
 
Gotta keep in mind that these are just kids.


They're supposed to do stupid things and make mistakes.


Can't expect them to come out the gate knowing everything.

That's the whole point. They are being forced to grow up fast. Jukebox is constantly explaining this VERY important part of the story when she talks to Kanaan after every one of his fuck ups. She didn't even get mad at him for the white girl shit. Just chalked it up to how fucked up they environment is and what it made them into
 
That's the whole point. They are being forced to grow up fast. Jukebox is constantly explaining this VERY important part of the story when she talks to Kanaan after every one of his fuck ups. She didn't even get mad at him for the white girl shit. Just chalked it up to how fucked up they environment is and what it made them into
They aren’t forced to do anything..... they could have just gone to school....
 
The show has some of the worst writing I have ever seen. Power which is unrealistic as fuck is 100x more realistic than this shit. I'm gonna continue purely off the strength of wanting to see dude's mother finally get killed because I can't stand her. Waiting to see how he links up with Ghost and Tommy as well if we ever get there
 
The show has some of the worst writing I have ever seen. Power which is unrealistic as fuck is 100x more realistic than this shit. I'm gonna continue purely off the strength of wanting to see dude's mother finally get killed because I can't stand her. Waiting to see how he links up with Ghost and Tommy as well if we ever get there
lol we most likely will see by middle of season 2 or 3
 
Elaborate :oreally:
We know how it ended between those 2 so they put that in there to basically play with the audiences emotions to show us how close they were and to show exactly how cold Kanan will eventually become

They had Kanan look her in the eyes and say i love you so the audience says "nigga you still merked her smh"
 
So in a nutshell...Raq did all this to keep bruh from tellin Kanan he's his father.
 
So in a nutshell...Raq did all this to keep bruh from tellin Kanan he's his father.
Her baby daddy mentioned before if the streets found out that she had a baby with popo that it was a rap for her. He was right too. She did what she had to do to keep her rep. Kanan shoulda finished him. She woulda got rid of two problems at once with Unique going down. We'll say how it plays out tho.

Kanan is such a fuck up. He shouldn't be in those type of situations tho.
 
Her baby daddy mentioned before if the streets found out that she had a baby with popo that it was a rap for her. He was right too. She did what she had to do to keep her rep. Kanan shoulda finished him. She woulda got rid of two problems at once with Unique going down. We'll say how it plays out tho.

Kanan is such a fuck up. He shouldn't be in those type of situations tho.
Explains why he likes Tariq so much
 
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