AT&T CEO compares HBO to Tiffany jewelry and Netflix to Walmart

Dwayne Johnson in HBO’s
“Ballers.”
HBO

• AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson compared HBO to
  Tiffany, the luxury jewelry retailer, and Netflix to Walmart at
  a Goldman Sachs conference on Wednesday. 
• The comparison follows remarks made by
  WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey in July about expanding the
  quantity of HBO’s offerings to reach a “broad” audience that
  could better compete with services like
  Netflix.  

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson used a striking retail metaphor
at a Goldman Sachs conference on Wednesday to compare the
streaming offerings of Netflix and the AT&T-owned HBO. 

“I think of Netflix as kind of the Walmart of SVOD
[streaming video on demand]. HBO’s kind of the Tiffany,”
Stephenson said at Goldman’s Communacopia conference.

Stephenson’s comparison of Netflix and HBO follows a series
of comments from WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey in July about
expanding the quantity of HBO’s offerings to
reach a “broad” audience that could better compete with rival
streaming services like Netflix.  

Stankey said in a townhall conversation with HBO CEO
Richard Plepler in July that HBO’s current subscriber numbers,
around 40 million in the US and 142 million worldwide, were
insufficient, and that the company would have to become a “much
more common product,” according to a recording obtained by The
New York Times. 

Stephenson on Wednesday reportedly said he “concurs” with
Stankey’s assessment, but his comments helped to clarify the
cable outlet’s content-spending strategy.

“You’d like to fill out the schedule,” Stephenson said.
“We’re not talking about Netflix-level of investments.”

Stephenson
added that HBO needs a “more fulsome lineup and schedule” to
combat the flux of subscribers who sign up for HBO to watch “Game
of Thrones” and then leave when a season ends.

Nevertheless, BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield seized on
Stephenson’s Tiffany-Walmart metaphor to note how drastically
Walmart outperformed Tiffany in revenue last year: 

And oddly enough, Walmart is itself exploring a
subscription video-streaming service that would reportedly seek
to challenge Netflix and Amazon, according to
a  Wall
Street Journal report from July.