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Mounting
Paramount+ just had its best quarter on record after welcoming 9.9 million new subscribers to the Plus party.
The bad news for those new subs? Things are only going to get more pricey from here on in. Paramount is keen to capitalize on its growing sub-count, making the decision to hike prices across its major markets after the wider company saw an advertising slump which sent sales down 7% for the quarter.
New kid on the couch
Since rebranding from CBS All Access back in early 2021, Paramount’s foray into streaming has been a blockbuster success, gaining subscribers every quarter, unlike some of its more long-standing rivals which have started to stagnate. Global smash hits like Top Gun: Maverick and the neo-Western series Yellowstone were highlighted as key international drivers for Q4, helping the platform to pull up a seat at the 50m+ club.
All told, Paramount+ now sits at 56m subscribers, up ~40m in 2 years, a clear sign that its partnership-based approach to the streaming game — it offered all Walmart+ members a free subscription last year, for example — is clearly paying off. While it’s still some way off Netflix, which recently deprived its 231 million-strong subscriber base of its shuffling “surprise me” feature, Paramount+ still looks to be on a healthy trajectory. It seems that there's still space on the couch for multiple streaming services to capture 50-100m strong audiences.
Electric avenue
On Wednesday, The White House announced that Tesla is set to start opening up part of its charging network, making 7,500 charging stations — roughly half of which will be Tesla’s fast “superchargers” — available to non-Tesla EVs by 2024.
That’s a big deal, and gives the government a better chance of achieving its goal of 500,000 accessible chargers across the country by 2030. Indeed, Tesla isn’t the only company plugging in to help. Hertz, BP, GM, and EVgo are among the 16 companies that will provide an additional 100,000 chargers to the US network. A bigger network should, of course, accelerate the switch to EVs, and mitigate some of the current range anxiety.
Nudging
The carrot for participating in building out the charging network is getting a slice of the Biden administration’s $7.5bn EV charging fund. That’s encouraged Tesla execs to deviate from their prior policy, where they kept their setup from rival brands in a similar way to how Apple has shielded much of its tech ecosystem from competitors. The pivot has already got some Tesla drivers worried about long waiting times at busier charging stations though.
Shake Shack reported this week that its sales grew 17% last year, with operating losses narrower than analysts had expected.
After starting life as a humble hotdog stand in Madison Square Park in 2001, “The Shack” was eventually upgraded to a kiosk in 2004, but the burger chain didn’t fully take shape until 2010 when it opened its first store outside of New York. Since then, the company's restaurant count has grown quickly, with a total of 436 Shacks worldwide — though the financial side of the business hasn't stacked up quite as nicely.
Steep shack
Shake Shack’s slim margins are hardly uncommon in the world of casual and fast food, but things really turned for the chain when the pandemic took a big bite out of its business. Revenue shrunk to $523m in 2020 and the company’s modest operating income quickly turned to a $44m loss. While revenues have bounced back since — the Shack took in over $900m last year — the company still hasn’t been able to get out of the red.
Shake Shack execs will be hoping that a new luxuriously decadent white truffle range will be the key ingredient to boost its margins. Unfortunately, it may have trouble convincing customers who already see it as the chain that offers the least “bang for your buck”.
• Stuck in traffic? London, where a 6.2-mile journey takes an agonizing 36 minutes 20 seconds on average, is officially the world’s slowest city to drive in.
• FanDuel’s parent company Flutter said it was taking 50,000 bets every minute during the Super Bowl’s peak.
• On average, a car will crash into a 7-Eleven storefront every day in the US.
• Everyday robots: assessing American awareness of the daily interactions we have with AI.
• Architectural Digest’s list of 20 “Works of Wonder” will have you awe-struck.
Quick cut: Which genre, that accounted for more than 11% of North American box office takings in 1999, has dwindled in the years since, making up just 1.4% of the total last year? [Answer below].
Answer here.
