Don't lump Paramount (PARA) into the leaky streaming ship that is Netflix (NFLX), the company's CFO contend.
"We definitely had a different outcome than Netflix [in the first quarter], adding 6.8 million subscribers to Paramount+," Naveen Chopra told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). "I think it's a sign that despite a lot of the conversation following Netflix's results, consumers continue to be very excited about streaming — particularly streaming services that can bring very high quality content that appeals to diverse audiences which is exactly what we are doing with Paramount+."
Paramount said Tuesday it added 6.8 million subscribers to Paramount+ in the first quarter, bringing the platform's subscriber count to 40 million since launching in the U.S. during Q1 2021.
The company's total streaming subscriber count stood at 62 million, up 6.3 million from a year ago.
Suffice it to say, the situation was far different at Netflix in the first quarter.
The streaming giant saw a slight decline in subscribers in the quarter as some consumers balked at recent price increases and others broke free from their homes as the pandemic has turned the corner.
"Netflix is a growth company, but no longer a premium growth company," veteran tech analyst Mark Mahaney at EvercoreISI said on Yahoo Finance Live.
For the current quarter, Netflix said it expected an even steeper decline in new users.
The streaming service is modeling for subscribers to decline by 2 million in the fiscal second quarter, whereas consensus analysts were looking for a gain of 2.4 million. Netflix shares have crashed 46% in the past month.
"Our strategy is differentiated because we have the ability to combine our traditional business with our streaming aspirations," Paramount's Chopra said. "That yields a broader market, a model that is broader in terms of content, broader in terms of business model, broader in terms of the platforms that we distribute on, and broader in terms of geographic footprint. When you put those things together, we have a fundamentally different model and competitive edge relative to a lot of legacy streamers."
Brian Sozzi, a former Wall Street analyst, is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.
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