MBC Shahid posted revenues of USD 122.6 million in Q1 2026, up 17.5% year on year, and a net profit of USD 12.6 million, translating into a 10.3% net margin. That number needs context to land properly: in 2023, the platform was losing USD 74 million on a negative 33% net margin; by full-year 2025, that loss had narrowed sharply to USD 21 million, or negative 5.7%. What makes Q1 2026 particularly interesting is that Shahid reached a 10.3% net margin despite softer advertising demand and regional volatility. The competitive comparison makes this even more striking. Streaming remains a scale-driven business where many platforms are still absorbing heavy losses. Anghami is the clearest regional reference point: in 2025, it generated USD 99.3 million in revenue but reported a USD 25.3 million gross loss, equivalent to a negative 25% gross margin, with OSN+ acting as the main drag. The temptation is to read the margin improvement as cost-cutting. The more accurate read is portfolio optimisation. The Saudi Pro League is the clearest example: Shahid did not renew the rights, which were taken over by Thmanyah, and instead absorbed the loss by shifting toward a more diversified sports portfolio spanning the Bundesliga, Copa del Rey, Coppa Italia, Saudi Women’s Premier League, and Saudi Basketball League. The same logic was applied to Western content: rather than continuing to pay upfront Hollywood licensing costs, Shahid shifted some access into revenue-share bundle arrangements with Disney+ and OSN+, preserving catalogue breadth while reducing capital at risk. MBC's commissioned content mix rose from 17% in 2020 to 30% in 2022 and has kept moving in that direction, reducing structural dependency on expensive acquisition. On the revenue side, the key variable is monetisation mix. B2C SVOD revenues represented approximately 88% of total SVOD revenues in Q1 2026, up from 87% in full-year 2025 and 85% in 2024. That shift matters because B2C subscribers carry higher ARPU than B2B telco bundles. Shahid has been deliberately engineering that mix through its bundle architecture: the Shahid-Netflix bundle launched in 2025, followed by the Epic Bundle with Disney+ and OSN+ on the same principle, expanding reach without ceding subscription economics to a distribution partner. The result is a subscriber base increasingly skewed toward direct-paying customers at market prices. Pricing power has reinforced that dynamic. Dataxis puts SVOD ARPU growth at 14% year on year in Saudi Arabia and 11% in Egypt between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026. A trend that could continue as Shahid has supported this through selective price increases at Q1 2026: Saudi Arabia’s Standard plan rose from USD 11.19 to USD 13.99, Egypt’s VIP plan from USD 2.67 to USD 3.29, and the UAE Standard plan from USD 10.88...
