Strong Parlophone releases boost Warner revenues

Warner Music Group has posted a quarterly revenue increase of 18.9% to US$788m to June 30.

The company’s revenue increase for this quarter is mostly owed to its acquisition of Parlophone. Without income from the label, revenue would have climbed 3.5%. Increased revenues from streaming platforms also accounted for the increase.

Rather unusually, Warner separately highlighted its incoming streaming revenues, which grew to US$69m in the last quarter ($53m excluding Parlophone). Overall digital revenue across the label group grew 26.1% to US$324m and accounted for 41.1% of total revenue, a 38% year-on-year increase.

However, net losses deepened to US$185m from a loss of US$62 million a year earlier. Operating was US$66m, down slightly from US$69m in last year’s equivalent quarter.

The Parlophone acquisition delivered two huge successes for the label in the last quarter: Coldplay’s Ghost Stories and Lily Allen’s Sheezus. Other strong releases from the label group included Black Key’s Turn Blue, Ed Sheeran’s x, Linkin Park’s The Hunting Party and Jason Derulo’s Talk Dirty. 

Warner’s EVP and CFO Brian Roberts says, “We…expect the impact from our strong release schedule will continue into the fourth quarter.”

Finally, licensing revenue grew 21.2%, while music publishing revenue grew 2.2 percent (0.7 percent without currency fluctuations); mechanical revenue fell 6.1% and synchronization revenue fell 3.8%.