Versant Posts First Standalone Earnings As CEO Mark Lazarus Hones Strategic Focus, Stock Pops

Newly minted Versant Media saw 2025 profit and revenue dip in a first set of financials — reported as if it had separated from Comcast for the full year — as CEO Mark Lazarus announced plans for a standalone MS Now streaming product, a CNBC subscription service, a free Fandango AVOD service and delved into the outlook for sports and advertising.

Shares popped more than 5% in early trading.

The cable programmer formally split from the Philadelphia media giant in early January but began operating independently last year, laying out out an original content strategy at an investor meeting in December. That included the MS Now (formerly MSNBC) product and several transactions strengthening Fandango and FAST technology. While anchored in pay TV, that business continues to slow and Versant is focused on diversifying versus acquiring more cable.

The goal ultimately is to move to a 50-50 revenue split with pay TV balanced by higher-growth digital, platform, subscription, AVOD and transactional businesses

The numbers: 2025 net income fell 32% last year to $930 million, on a 5.4% dip in revenue to about $7 billion.

The revenue breakdown saw linear distribution dipping 5.4% to about $4.1 billion; advertising off 9% at $1.6 billion; platforms up 3.9% at $826 million (led by Golf Now and Fandango); and content licensing off 8.5% to $193 million. CNBC and USA are the other core brands at Versant, which houses most of the cable networks formerly under NBCUniversal.

With linear TV so challenged, sports and news are key and Lazarus stressed the expansion of USA Sports’ portfolio through new Pac-12 and women’s sports agreements. He said on a call with analysts that the cost looming as the NFL comes to market will lead to bigger media rivals rebalancing their sports portfolios, “which will create opportunities for us.”

NBCUniversal will continue to represent Versant on the ad side for at least the next two years, “and they they and we will decide on the right future strategy for our ad sales,” Lazarus said.

Adjusted EBITDA of $2.42 billion was down 14%. Versant ended the year with cash and cash equivalents of $1.09 billion and $983 million in long term debt

The board declared a $0.375 quarterly dividend and authorized a $1 billion share repurchase program, which caught Wall Street’s attention.

“Versant enters this next chapter as an independent, well-positioned media and entertainment company with strong momentum and clear strategic focus. In 2025, we strengthened our leadership in premium programming, expanded our audience, grew our platforms businesses, and successfully established ourselves as a standalone company,” said Lazarus.

Asked for his thoughts on the Warner Bros. Discovery merger drama, he didn’t say much but noted, “the wider view was that it was interesting” because of the WBD assets in play. Comcast tried to buy Warner Bros. studios and and streaming assets, which WBD agreed to sell to Netflix before terminating that deal and making a deal to sell the whole company to Paramount.

Under the Netflix deal, WBD would have spun out its cable networks into a separate company like Comcast did with Versant. As Paramount tried (ultimately successfully) to derail Netflix, David Ellison and his team used newly public Versant as a frequent punching bag to extrapolate a grim $1 valuation for a standalone Discovery Global.