Paramount Global (PARA) reported mixed fourth-quarter results. Adjusted earnings per share of $0.04 was better than the $0.00 Wall Street expected. However, revenue of $7.64 billion fell short of the estimated $7.89 billion. A decline in linear ad revenue took a toll on the entertainment company's results, however, the direct-to-consumer numbers were better than expected. CEO Bob Bakish said in the release that the company now expects domestic Paramount+ to be profitable in 2025.

Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton break down the results.

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Editor's note: This article was written by Stephanie Mikulich.

Video Transcript

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JOSH LIPTON: Shares of paramount slightly lower here after missing expectations on revenue in the fourth quarter. Let's talk about these results real quick here, Julie. So Q4 sales, they did drop 6% to 7.64 billion and that is a miss though earnings of $0.04. It looks like X some items. That was better than what the Street was looking for than consensus.

Subscribers to the streaming service paramount plus 67.5 million that did increase about 4 million from the previous quarter that beat estimates. Revenue in that services grew to about 1.87 billion. And yes, they did post a loss there. But it doesn't look like it was as much of a loss as analysts had forecast. You could see, shares down a bit here in the after hours.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah and as our Alexander Canal who covers the company in more detail pointed out in her write up on the earnings, ad revenue down linear ad revenue. In particular down 15% year over year. That was worse than estimated. But really this was a mixed picture because if you look at its direct to consumer losses according to Ali $490 million that's narrower than analysts had been anticipating.

So that's something to keep in mind as well. Subscribers to paramount plus 67.5 million, which was also ahead of estimates. So again mixed picture here as we know though and as we've been talking about, really what investors want to is, is there going to be a sale?

JOSH LIPTON: What is the future of this company?

JULIE HYMAN: Who is it going to be? And is it or is it going to be the sale of the parent company, Skydance or what is this all going to look like here. And I think that National Amusements, excuse me, Skydance is one of the companies that was talked about as a buyer. I got all of it.

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah.

JULIE HYMAN: Alphabet soup to my head here. But in any case, I think that's really what investors are waiting to hear about.

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah, we know they've been weighing offers different reports of who might be interested to kick in the tires. This stock has been hammered. I mean, heading into this print, it was down about 50% in the past 12 months. Edging lower at least initially here in the after hours.