Starz is finally on his own track.

Since 2016, Lionsgate owned premium channels officially completed its long-awaited separation from the studio – and the first day of trading on the Nasdaq Exchange signed by the "STRZ" on the Nasdaq Exchange, with a stock ratio of more than 140%, ending up falling 40% at $11.40 per share. Starz CEO Jeffrey Hirsch has been preparing for the separation for more than three years.

He has long been preparing to grow the company through a strategy targeting subscribers in the United States and Canada, and primarily targeting underpopulated women and audiences. The Urban Drama franchise of "Strength" is the backbone of the strategy, as is the romantic romantic drama "Outlander" and its spin-offs.

Hirsch talks with him type Regarding the company’s plans for the future, the benefits from Lionsgate in nearly nine years and how Starz’s “We’re All Adults Here” marketing campaign honed the brand.

It feels like the longest separation process in the world. How do you feel at the end of the long road?

We announced that we will be split in November 2021, so it's a long process, but the timing has been resolved. Now is the right time and a good time to separate. We are happy to be able to draw our direction and focus only on what we do well and grow our business and good. Just like renovating a house. It's always longer than you think, but once you get into it, you forget the process of getting there.

Can you outline the scope of today’s Starz? Let me know your subscriber base and let me know the scope of the company.

Our revenue is about $1 billion, and 70% of that revenue has been digitized. 65% of all our subscribers are digital. So we do get the transition out of linearity and we are always profitable. Therefore, our profit margin is 15%. In this margin, we convert about 70% of it into unleveraged free cash flow. Therefore, very good cash flow generation business. We will have $600 million in business debt. So we leveraged about three times. Such a good balance sheet, very strong consumer base. We have about 530 employees. Our largest office is Denver. We have a great technical team and a great financial team, but who built Starz App Homegrown and all of our data, I think it's really a feature that others don't have and allows us to transition like we do.

We believe that in the next few years we can increase revenue by 1% to 3%. We think our profit margins can range from 15% to 20%, and we feel very good about the organic path to our business. And we also think there are many opportunities for our technology platform and our ability to transform business from linear to digital, and we can do similar things for other networks as well.

You focus on the United States and Canada. Will that change? Will this limit your growth potential?

A year ago, we retreated internationally. So, what I want to say is that most of our business has such a small work in Canada. We believe the opportunity in the United States and Canada is about 80 million households. Today we sit in 20 million households, so we think there are many opportunities to grow our business by focusing on the United States and Canada,

Let me know about the Internet profile. Who is watching Staz?

As you know, our plans and strategies are ruthlessly focused on women and underrepresented narratives, which we continue to lean towards in a large way. So, at the moment, two-thirds of the subscriber base is women, half white women, half black women, and that is really the cornerstone of the business and we will continue to lean in a big way. Shows like “Power” and “Outlander” are indeed the basis of this programming strategy, and we will continue to lean towards it. You see we were lucky enough to win the announcement of Miranda's Rights in July, a book that was a huge gain for us, and it is indeed our narrative and programming strategy. And, we have 40 to 50 projects under development, and Starz will have the move forward, which is really exactly in line with our work. So we think the pipeline of content is great. Today, we have five shows with 9 to 12 million viewers a week.

Now that you are separated from Lionsgate, what is your production capacity?

We have a good relationship with Lionsgate. I think this will continue to be a good relationship. We have reached a production service agreement. They made a bunch of our shows. The "Strength" show is owned by Lionsgate. We have a great new couple story in that universe. We announced the "original", which is the origin story of "power". We have another one to come and we have not announced that we are very satisfied with it.

We also have a good relationship with Sony. We announced the "Outlander" prequel this summer, (premiered in August). It is spectacular. Back to Scotland. I think it's as good as anything will be on TV this summer. We are excited about it. We will develop ourselves as we did in the past, we will continue to do it, we will use Lionsgate to make those shows we have or we will continue to use other third parties. So I don't think production services are a problem for us and can really lean towards and develop the shows we have.

So your message to town developers and agents is: Take us in.

Yes, we are completely open to business. "All Four" is a great example of what we want. "Strength" universe. We already have a show called "Faildland" and we have announced a show with ("Power" executive producer) 50 cents. It's still under development - it's a British boxing show we feel good. So we are buying.

I think since you focus on us and Canada, this is very attractive to your studio partners because you allow them to sell international rights, right?

Yes. We have a good relationship with the sky, where we actually became a US destination for some of their content, too. Therefore, we can obviously acquire international property from the United States as well.

Can you provide us with what you spend on content this year or next?

You can take a look at our financial situation and see that there is a range in history. We won't increase our content spending. We believe that there are the right amounts in our financial portfolio that can maintain a 15% margin and achieve a 20% margin, so we think the scale is correct between our originals, acquisitions, Lionsgate paid one deals and Universal Pay-Two-Two Plus library deals. We think we have a great portfolio of financial expenses.

You made suggestions for a potential acquisition. Do you want to bolt to the Starz platform on more channels?

We think there is a real opportunity to use our technology platform and take away the script that we transitioned from 100% linearly to today’s digital numbers when we launched in 2015, and within the focus of women and underrepresented audiences, we think there is an opportunity to work with the web to drive something for the digital world through the web or to push the digital world through the web. We do think Starz has an opportunity to build and advertise-supported revenue base, which is complemented by our subscription base.

Sounds like a fast (free ad-supported TV) channel?

I didn't sell it soon. I think this is more of our SVOD (the demand for subscribing to videos (business).

There are some linear channels that will reach the market from NBCuniversal, and we hope there will be more channels. But aren't you on the online sex channel market?

So to say, I don't actually think of them as linear channels. I think of them as ad-supported content wrapped at linear cost. So I do think that if they do fit our programming tasks and we love the content, then I think this might be a good home for us.

You launched the “We’re All Adults Here” brand campaign last year to show that Starz’s programming is an envelope-based sales pitch, not very friendly. Is this something you want to enlarge?

I think these two movements are really what we do in terms of content in both embodiments. We are unapologetic, we are bold, we are adults. We went to places other networks didn’t, and I think it was really a real marketing team doing a great job as a creative way to talk about what we do and what we do. So we will lean towards this. I think this is a good message for the community, small towns, what kind of shows we are looking for and what we are willing to do. So as we move forward we will go into so many ways in a bigger way.

Jeffrey, you've been with Starz before the Lionsgate acquisition and you've been promoted to the highest job ever since. When you do that, what are the benefits of being with Lionsgate? Then, the second half of this question is, now what can you do not do a week ago?

It was the right deal to bring these companies together during 2016-2017. We have been able to grow all our businesses together. We learned a lot from Lionsgate TV and how to make a TV. Being able to shoot movies from Lionsgate like we did, it really has an impact on the business. Overall, having multiple different business behaviors as the industry changes is a great way to continue growing your business, a protected public entity. But now that we are separated, I think the world has changed again, and we have the opportunity to expand our business around women and underrepresented audiences, which I think is what the studio has and we just can’t do.