Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. will always prioritize profitability over streaming subscriber targets, CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said.

Speaking at a Sept. 13 investor conference, Wiedenfels said the company expects its direct-to-consumer business — which will integrate HBO Max and Discovery+ beginning in summer 2023 in the U.S. — to reach a financial breakeven point domestically in 2024. Warner Bros. Discovery seeks to attain $1 billion of profit globally with its direct-to-consumer service the following year.

To reach that goal, Warner Bros. Discovery expects to reach 130 million subscribers globally by 2025. But that estimate ranks second to its profit guidance.

The company has been "very clear that we're not optimizing for subscribers. We're optimizing for a long-term sustainable business for one additional distribution platform that's going to drive a better monetization of our content and as such, better shareholder value," Wiedenfels said.

Prioritizing subscriber growth over financial success is "one of the issues with sort of the old world of streaming service evaluation," Wiedenfels said.

The company finished the second quarter, its first following the completion of its merger April 8, with a combined 92.1 million HBO, HBO Max and Discovery+ subscribers. At that point, there was an overlap of 4 million between the services.

Although Wiedenfels would not discuss prospective pricing for ad-free and ad-light versions of the integrated product, the executive said the current HBO Max and Discovery+ offerings with commercials are performing well.

"We like the segmenting of a higher-priced ad-free offering" and a discounted ad-light offering, where the services' reduced ad loads are commanding pricing levels 2.5 to three times greater than linear inventory, Wiedenfels said. "We're actually making more money on each subscriber in the ad-light space than on the ad-free version."

Even as work continues toward integrating the content portfolios and technological stacks of the former Warner Media and Discovery properties, the executive said the company may still license content to other streaming services in certain markets, as that tactic could yield enhanced shareholder value.

That could mean the company is happy with fewer subscribers "but better profitability or the other way around. We will figure that out over time," Wiedenfels said. The company is "optimizing for value, not for a hollow [key performance indicator] such as subscribers."

While building out its streaming service is integral to its fiscal fortunes, the company continues to see opportunities with its legacy basic-cable holdings and Warner Bros. Television's third-party licensing.

The company's industry-leading Emmy haul underlined that point. In addition to HBO/HBO Max's combined 38 wins, CNN (US) and TBS (US) also earned statues. An additional eight Emmys were awarded to programs the television studio has licensed to other content providers.

"One of the points that we made when we started talking about bringing these companies together and the strategy for Warner Bros. Discovery is that we're open for business," Wiedenfels said.