Disagree. Here is 5 reasons why
1. Revenues up in parks ONLY because of line fees - something that is becoming universally detested by diehards and regular casuals. So what would it be if they didn’t have paid fastpsss? That’s not “growth” at all and it’s not sustainable
2. More bad sequels that dilute what they peddle.
3. Layoffs across the board. You might get a temp Wall Street bump but it’s not a sign of company strength/growth.
4. Any reduction in capex based on Disneys ledger can only be viewed as a red flag. Amusement assets stagnate/decay. That’s the deal with them if you don’t think one step ahead.
5. The D+ subscriber numbers are worrisome. So how you gonna make trillions? Charge more every month for that.
As for your list:
1) They clearly state volumes were up, meaning attendance was up and helped drive some revenue growth. I can attest to this, the parks have been packed on the most random January days like never before.
2) Very much agree - where is all that "creativity" he spoke of?
3) Not necessarily, with the reorg and dismantling of 2.0's org, it's to be expected. I would assume most of it is coming from the bloated and expensive production side where they want to reduce costs ASAP. Also the streaming tech side was probably fat as they launched around the world - time to trim that anyway.
4) This doesn't bother me "yet", it is only a reduction from current spend to next year spend - we knew nothing was in the pipeline for the immediate future, so why doesn't this make sense, as all the new builds finish up (Tron, Water, GoG, etc). They did not say it was now zero, still plenty of money to keep things from decaying.
5) I was actually shocked they gained in US considering the price increases, looked like most of the loss was from low rev. India subscribers. So not worrisome at all. What does worry us all I think, is how does this low margin business ever replace linear margins? Like you, I don't see how it does.
. Iger simply swatted him away....
