The comments didn’t come as a surprise since management has said it would continue to look for entertainment and other offerings after the deal. AT&T CEO John Stankey, in unveiling the Discovery merger in May, had signaled that the telecom giant would continue to offer key content via agreements with programming partners after the mega-deal, saying: “I think we have leaned into the prospect of always using different services to provide value to the customer.
“We feel really good about the progress of HBO Max,” Desroches also said on Wednesday. He mentioned the rollout of the streamer in parts of Europe in the current quarter in addition to good momentum in Latin America. Asked about the impact of day-and-date movies this year that will be less common next year, the CFO said: “This is something that we know how to do.” And he added that fans would remain “enthusiastic” next year. “We feel really good about the ability to keep the momentum going.”
On Oct. 21, AT&T CEO John Stankey had said that the company continues to expect the deal to close by mid-year 2022, which Desroches reiterated on Wednesday by speaking of a close during the first half of the year as he has done before. Originally, the companies had announced a deal close in mid-2022. Asked about further clarity when during the first half it could wrap, he said there have been “no surprises” and the companies were where they had been expected to be at this stage.
“The general progress on the deal, I think, is consistent with what we would have expected as we walked into it,” Stankey said during the third-quarter
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