Walt Disney reduced streaming losses by $400m from the prior quarter but also shed subscribers, the company said last night as its quarterly earnings landed in line with Wall Street expectations.
Shares of Disney fell 4.4% in after-hours trading.
A price increase and reduced marketing expenses helped improve the performance of Disney's streaming unit from January to March.
The division ended the quarter with an operating loss of $659m, compared with $1.1 billion in the prior quarter.
At the same time, total subscribers to the flagship Disney+ service dropped by 4 million to 157.8 million.
Most of the defections came from the Disney+ Hotstar offering in India after it lost streaming rights to Indian Premier League cricket matches. Disney also shed 300,000 customers in the US and Canada, where it raised prices last December.
Analysts had expected Disney would add more than 1 million customers in the quarter, Insider Intelligence analyst Paul Verna said.
Wall Street has been pressuring media companies to make profits from the billions of dollars they have poured into streaming in recent years to compete with Netflix.
Still, investors appear "fixated on subscriber net additions," said PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore. "Striking a fine balance between customer acquisition versus financial performance is no easy feat."
Overall, Disney's diluted earnings per share came in at 93 cents, meeting the consensus forecast of analysts polled by Refinitiv.
Revenue hit $21.82 billion, slightly above analyst projections of $21.79 billion.
