DIS Shareholders and Stock Info ONLY

[OKW Lover]

Reckon why depreciation increased? Isn't that supposed to be a relatively constant figure year to year?

I wonder if the Wish has had an impact.

 

[wabbott]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/disney-earnings-second-quarter-2023-may-10-200858196.html

Disney stock sees biggest decline in six months after subscribers miss estimates
Alexandra Canal · Senior Reporter
Thu, May 11, 2023 at 4:10 PM EDT

Disney (DIS) stock tumbled as much as 9% and closed down 8.7% on Thursday — its biggest decline in six months — after the media giant reported quarterly results on Wednesday that showed earnings per share missed estimates by a penny while Disney+ shed 4 million subscribers in the quarter.

The subscriber miss comes as streaming losses narrowed amid Disney's continued efforts to slash $5.5 billion in costs this year.

The report was the first since Disney announced its new three-pronged business reorganization — Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Parks, Experiences and Products — as CEO Bob Iger attempts to streamline the media giant and reset its strategy. The company will begin reporting under the new structure later this year.

Theme parks, particularly international parks, continued to be a strong outperformer with operating income hitting $2.17 billion in the quarter, echoing recent trends at competitors like Comcast's Universal (CMCSA).

Despite Disney+ subscribers missing expectations amid recent price hikes, streaming losses narrowed to $659 million in the second quarter— above consensus estimates of $850 million — from a loss of $887 million in the year-ago period. The company reported a streaming loss of $1.1 billion in Q1 and a $1.5 billion loss in Q4.

"We’re pleased with our accomplishments this quarter, including the improved financial performance of our streaming business, which reflect the strategic changes we’ve been making throughout the company to realign Disney for sustained growth and success," Iger said in the earnings release. "From movies to television, to sports, news, and our theme parks, we continue to deliver for consumers, while establishing a more efficient, coordinated, and streamlined approach to our operations."

Here are Disney's second-quarter results compared with Wall Street's consensus estimates, as compiled by Bloomberg:

• Revenue: $21.82 billion versus $21.82 billion expected
• Adj. earnings per share (EPS): $0.93 versus $0.94 expected
• Total Disney+ subscribers: 157.8 million versus 163.1 million expected
• Disney Parks, Experiences and Products revenue: $7.78 billion versus $7.67 billion expected

Iger, who stepped back into the CEO position in November, has remained hyper-focused on profitability as investors shift focus away from subscriber growth and put more emphasis on margins. The company's direct-to-consumer division, which includes Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+, shed a whopping $4 billion-plus in its fiscal 2022 ended Oct. 1, after it spent an estimated $33 billion on content last year.

Since that time, Iger has worked hard to establish new revenue streams like Disney's recently launched ad-supported tier, in addition to various price increases to help pare losses and lift metrics like average revenue per user, or ARPU.

Domestic ARPU at Disney+ improved 20% sequentially to reach $7.14 in Q2 2022. The company reported domestic ARPU of $5.95 in the prior quarter.

Iger has consistently reaffirmed the company's outlook of reaching streaming profitability by the year 2024, although it will be a bumpy road ahead.

The future of Hulu became more obvious on Thursday after Iger pivoted his previous stance that "everything was on the table" in regards to the streaming giant.

"I've now had another 3 months to really study this carefully and figure out what is the best path for us to grow this business. It's clear that a combination of the content that is on Disney+ with general entertainment is a very positive," Iger said on the company's quarterly earnings call, adding he's now "bullish" on the combination of Disney+ with Hulu.

The company revealed it will soon offer a one-app experience domestically that incorporates Hulu content via Disney+.

On the parks side of the business, operating income beat expectations of $2.14 billion to hit $2.17 billion, higher than Q2 2022's $1.76 billion.

Parks soared to $3.05 billion in Q1 on strong domestic theme park trends. Analysts have remained largely bullish on the parks business despite heightened risks to margins amid inflation.

Earlier this year, Disney announced long-awaited updates to its parks reservation system and annual passholder program following intense backlash from consumers over lengthy wait times and sky-high ticket prices.

Advertising, meanwhile, continued to be a headwind, similar to competitors. Linear network revenues fell 7% in the quarter compared to the year-ago period.

 

[wabbott]

I wonder if the Wish has had an impact.

That could be it. And they bought that half built Global Dream which will cost a bunch to finish out.

 

[OKW Lover]

That could be it. And they bought that half built Global Dream which will cost a bunch to finish out.

…true but the global dream hull won’t affect depreciation until it goes into service

 

[RamblingMad]

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/13ewyin

 

[clarker99]

I guess a headline stating ‘Disney+ revenue up 20%’ would not get as many clicks as ‘subscriber miss’

For context: The subscriber losses were out of India bc Hotstar doesn’t have the streaming rights to the IPL. These were very very low ARPU subs. Which is why Disney didnt up their bid to keep the IPL rights. They lost these low ARPU subs yet gained 20% in rev.

 

[intensifyresearch09@gmail]

Walt Disney shares declined sharply Wednesday after the company reported its earnings for the quarter ended March 2023, with a fall in Disney+ subscribers.

The entertainment company said that during the quarter, total Disney+ subscribers declined by 4 million to 157.8 million. The fall in subscriptions was mainly due to the Disney Hotstar offering in India after it lost streaming rights to Indian Premier League cricket matches. Disney also shed 300,000 customers in the United States and Canada, where it raised prices last December.

However, Walt Disney reduced streaming losses by $400 million from the prior quarter, in line with Wall Street expectations.

A price increase and reduced marketing expenses helped improve the performance of Disney's streaming unit from January through March. The division ended the quarter with an operating loss of $659 million, compared with $1.1 billion in the prior quarter.

The shares of Disney plunged 4.76% to USD 96.33 in after-hours trading.

Disney's diluted earnings per share came in at 93 cents. Revenue hit $21.82 billion, slightly above analyst projections of $21.79 billion.

Meanwhile, the company's theme parks kept humming with visitors, with growth at its Shanghai Disney Resort, Disneyland Paris and Hong Kong Disneyland Resort helping lift operating income at the unit by 23% from a year earlier to $2.2 billion.

The company’s Chief Executive Bob Iger said that it plans to expand its streaming offerings by year's end with a new app that combines the family-friendly Disney and the Hulu general entertainment service.

intensify research private limited

 

[intensifyresearch09@gmail]

.

 

[intensifyresearch09@gmail]

Walt Disney shares declined sharply Wednesday after the company reported its earnings for the quarter ended March 2023, with a fall in Disney+ subscribers.

The entertainment company said that during the quarter, total Disney+ subscribers declined by 4 million to 157.8 million. The fall in subscriptions was mainly due to the Disney Hotstar offering in India after it lost streaming rights to Indian Premier League cricket matches. Disney also shed 300,000 customers in the United States and Canada, where it raised prices last December.

However, Walt Disney reduced streaming losses by $400 million from the prior quarter, in line with Wall Street expectations.
A price increase and reduced marketing expenses helped improve the performance of Disney's streaming unit from January through March. The division ended the quarter with an operating loss of $659 million, compared with $1.1 billion in the prior quarter.

The shares of Disney plunged 4.76% to USD 96.33 in after-hours trading.

Disney's diluted earnings per share came in at 93 cents. Revenue hit $21.82 billion, slightly above analyst projections of $21.79 billion.

Meanwhile, the company's theme parks kept humming with visitors, with growth at its Shanghai Disney Resort, Disneyland Paris and Hong Kong Disneyland Resort helping lift operating income at the unit by 23% from a year earlier to $2.2 billion.

The company’s Chief Executive Bob Iger said that it plans to expand its streaming offerings by year's end with a new app that combines the family-friendly Disney and the Hulu general entertainment service.

intensify research private limited

 

[wabbott]

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DIS?p=DIS

92.39 +0.08 (+0.09%)
Pre-Market: 07:01AM EDT

 

[Scalemaster34]

You also have the governmental "attacks" on Disney, that have to be a concern to shareholders. No Fly Zones, Monorail and Special District - these things (and likly more to come) could all have an affect on Disney's ability to profitable operate their Theme Parks.

 

[clarker99]

I think the stock is down bc $DIS said cuts and restructuring will continue through FY23. If you are an institutional investor and have to make money for your clients in the short term or at least through the end of the year, getting out of $Dis and into something else prob makes sense (esp with no dividend to whet your appetite while you wait for the turnaround). I don't think the 'subscriber loss' has much to do with it at all.

 

[HokieRaven5]

You also have the governmental "attacks" on Disney, that have to be a concern to shareholders. No Fly Zones, Monorail and Special District - these things (and likly more to come) could all have an affect on Disney's ability to profitable operate their Theme Parks.

Disney came out with this in their SEC filing:

In Florida, steps directed at the Company (including the passage of legislation) have been taken and future actions have been threatened, which collectively could negatively impact (and may have already impacted) our ability to execute on our business strategy, our costs and the profitability of our operations in Florida.

https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1744489/000174448923000099/dis-20230401.htm

 

[HokieRaven5]

Also since they share it in their SEC filings domestic hotel occupancy is up for the first 2 quarters of 2023 vs 2022

Q1 FY23 88% vs 73% Q1 FY22

Q2 FY23 89% vs 85% Q2 FY22

International had some big jumps (helps to have a reduction in closures):

Q1 FY23 67% vs 52% Q1 FY22

Q2 FY23 72% vs 46% Q2 FY22

 

[wabbott]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/b...grade-analyst-streaming-linear-tv-1235486320/

Disney Analyst Downgrades Stock Due to “Risky” Streaming Sub Forecasts, “Deteriorating” Linear TV
by Georg Szalai

Wolfe's Peter Supino moves from an "outperform" to a "peer perform" rating, citing "cognitive dissonance."
May 12, 2023 6:10am PDT

Walt Disney shares got hit with a downgrade on Friday, with Wolfe Research analyst Peter Supino seeing “cognitive dissonance” taking the spotlight from the Hollywood conglomerate’s traditionally touted Disney magic.

“The theme parks growth, cost cuts and direct-to-consumer (DTC) average revenue per user growth we’ve forecast are in consensus (earnings estimates), while the DTC subscriber and linear TV outlooks keep deteriorating,” he argued in a Friday report. “DTC plan for more subs, higher prices and lower cost seems like cognitive dissonance.”

Supino cut his fiscal year 2024 operating income projection by 5 percent and changed his stock price target from $133 to N/A, or not applicable. Disney CEO Bob Iger and his team have said that they have started a broader refocusing of the entertainment giant, but more work was needed.

“With Disney+ subscriber forecasts looking risky, the linear TV outlook deteriorating, $2.5 billion of hard cost reductions now in consensus, and content amortization set to catch up to cash spend in the coming years, we downgrade Disney to ‘peer perform’,” he explained. “In fiscal year 2024, we expect less advertising and affiliate revenue (-$500 million) and less DTC revenue (-$1.1 billion with around 80 percent related to lower Disney+ subs). We see scope for additional cost cuts (integration of Hulu into Disney+, international DTC shutdowns, ESPN international sports rights and selling, general and administrative cuts), but high incremental margin DTC revenue growth is essential to Disney’s (stock) multiple, and we are increasingly skeptical.”

That said, Supino highlighted that after an 8.7 percent drop in Disney shares on Thursday, when several analysts cut their stock price targets, following its late Wednesday quarterly earnings report, he expects “valuation support” thanks to “strong parks and cost reduction trajectories.” In line with that, Disney’s stock was slightly higher in Friday pre-market trading.

 

[wabbott]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/b...ney-netflix-warner-bros-discovery-1235482963/

Upfronts Preview: The Year of Media Chaos (And How It Impacts Pitches for Ad Money)
From May 15-18, expect Disney, NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery execs to work overtime selling their wares to ad buyers during a downturn and a major work stoppage.
By Alex Weprin
May 12, 2023 7:42am PDT

For many in the media and entertainment industries, the past 12 months could be described as a year of everything everywhere all at once, a period of tumult and correction. And that’s before you factor in the writers strike.

Last May, Jeff Shell and Bob Chapek bounced onto the stages of New York’s Radio City Music Hall and Pier 36, respectively, as CEOs of their respective kingdoms, NBCUniversal and Disney. Nearly a year later, both men are out of the job. In fact, most of the top executives who led last year’s upfronts for NBCUniversal, Disney, Paramount, Fox, YouTube, Warner Bros. Discovery and The CW will not be onstage this time around (YouTube and The CW have also replaced their CEOs since then, and Paramount is skipping the week altogether).

Those who are holding events from May 15 to 18 will find themselves grappling with what is likely to be hundreds of striking writers right outside the doors of Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden. Netflix will join the upfront fray for the first time as it seeks to grow its advertising business. But it, too, has seen its share of tumult, culminating with a decision to abandon its planned in-person presentation on May 17 for a virtual event.

“I thought COVID threw a wrench in the upfront presentations, but [the strike] might make those [COVID disruptions] seem tame,” quips one high-level advertising source at a major entertainment company.

It’s not just former CEOs who will be missing from this year’s upfronts; if the strike continues, there’s a risk of diminished star power, as well. It goes without saying that comedic monologues from Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel will be missing, but key talent wanting to signal allyship with writers could also play a role.

Already, Bupkis star Edie Falco skipped Peacock’s Newfront on May 2 (the day of the strike’s first picket line), and Law & Order: SVU showrunner Warren Leight suggested on May 3 that others will follow suit. “Spoke to several more high profile actors — I don’t think that many actors will be showing up at Upfronts next week,” Leight shared on his social accounts. “Grateful for the staunch support of SAG-AFTRA and its members.”

It’s common for stars to appear onstage and introduce clips or performances, but the picket lines expected at the upfronts throw a wrench in those plans. Similarly, many of the venues that will host the upfronts rely on IATSE and Teamsters labor for lights, sound and stage management. If those unions refuse to cross the picket lines, anything could happen.

“I don’t envy any of the companies that have to put on a happy face, and with that sort of cloud hanging over their business,” says a top executive at another media company that is not hosting an upfront. “One big presentation event, and then a huge party after, is not really effective anymore for the day,” Paramount CEO Bob Bakish told analysts May 4 about his company’s decision to skip the upfronts in favor of smaller, brand-specific meetings, in what now seems like a prescient decision, particularly after their dismal earnings report.

The strike will also cause some mayhem with broadcast’s fall TV schedule, with uncertainty around what will be available and what won’t.

“The timing of the strike, obviously with the upfronts next week creates some — what’s the word– hesitancy,” Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said on his company’s latest earnings call May 9. “It’s hard to present an exact schedule, right?”

And the strike comes at the same moment when the industry finds itself in what Warner Bros. Discovery ad sales chief Jon Steinlauf describes as a “lackluster ad market,” and what another ad sales chief describes as “tough” and “unpredictable.” On May 4, Paramount reported that its TV advertising revenue fell by 11 percent year-over-year, citing “weakness in the global advertising market.” NBCUniversal, similarly, reported that its advertising revenue fell by more than 6 percent in the first quarter (when excluding the Super Bowl).

It’s a market where a steady hand atop the ad business could help soothe marketer concerns. Of course, on Friday morning, NBCUniversal’s ad sales chief Linda Yaccarino (who also presented last year) exited the company “effective immediately” despite being in “back to back rehearsals” for the upfront on Thursday. In other words, NBCU is going to need to pivot by Monday morning once more.

That hard-to-predict ad market, combined with what appear to be continued secular headwinds facing the traditional TV business, has led to quite a bit of disruption, including mass layoffs across the tech and entertainment sectors, and creative accounting techniques to reduce costs.

It was a year ago that Discovery and WarnerMedia merged to create Warner Bros. Discovery. What followed was a wave of cost-cutting and content write-downs unlike anything the media sector had seen, and it sparked something of a trend in the industry, which, writ large, pivoted to chasing cash flows and streaming profitability after years of chasing growth. Paramount in the first quarter took a nearly $1.7 billion charge on content write-downs tied to its merger of Showtime and Paramount+.

At AMC Networks, the company has had three CEOs since the last upfront and saw significant layoffs last year. “It was our belief that cord-cutting losses would be offset by gains in streaming. This has not been the case,” AMC Networks chairman Jim Dolan wrote at the time. “We are primarily a content company and the mechanisms for the monetization of content are in disarray.”

As it relates to traditional TV’s declining trajectory, for the first time since Fox Corp. spun out as its own company, it reported cable revenue to be down year-over-year last quarter, as cord-cutting outpaced higher carriage fees. The company is hoping that new deals can return it to growth. Of course, Fox Corp. has also had some other challenges this year that made national headlines (to put it mildly, see: Dominion), with potential for more to come.

Not every entertainment company lost its CEO in the past year (though certainly more of them did than one would have expected in April 2022, with cable giants Charter and Altice also swapping out CEOs, and the WWE’s Vince McMahon mayhem), but between the advertising crunch, cost-cutting measures and layoffs, no company has been left unscathed.

There’s a difficult macroeconomic environment causing an ad pullback; a slew of top executives out the door; a writers strike that threatens to cripple the scripted entertainment market; continued cord-cutting biting into linear TV profit margins; and a cutthroat streaming market preventing the rise of a sustainable business model. Still, if the upfronts are on, expect plenty of new smiling faces onstage, touting their vast streaming offerings and, of course, live sports — offerings that happen to be advertiser-friendly in an otherwise tough market, and that also happen to be relatively insulated from the strike.

What happens next is still unscripted.

 

[RivShore]

View attachment 760030
Meanwhile...

Look I'm not totally against Disney, I just hate the direction they have gone. Iger has ruined WDW
This is a quote from another board

Basically…the Disney parks model…specifically at wdw…
Was to make mass profits off products driven by satisfaction and Emotion by the customers.

Iger rejected that in accordance with a whacked out consumer economic theory that doesn’t believe in “competition”

So they deliberately have done investment piecemeal to maintain artificial crowd pressures that lead to higher cost “escape” products. Everything is done to “escape” the crowd…instead of pushing it through as it spent en masse.

Well the downside now is they’re so far behind on response capacity and the construction timelines have been fouled to the point that they’re stuck.

They’re one building cycle behind at all times - deliberately - when they invented profiting off being one ahead

Some other reasons Netflix had an uptick on Disney earnings:

https://www.fool.com/investing/2023...re-great-for-netflix/?utm_source=pocket_saves

 

[wabbott]

https://puck.news/igers-existential-question/

Iger’s Existential Question

There’s no erasing his historic earlier tenure at Disney, but the company is looking increasingly vulnerable, especially since Iger’s last big deal will likely be the $9 billion he’d spend to buy Hulu.

William D. Cohan
May 14, 2023

My, my, it’s tough out there in Big Media these days: streamers are losing subscribers, most are losing money, linear TV is in decline, there’s a writers strike that looks like it’s here to stay, and Wall Street research analysts and investors are losing faith. What’s a legendary C.E.O. like Bob Iger, now some six months into his second tour of duty, to do?

The question is becoming harder to answer, especially after Disney announced last week that it lost some 4 million streaming subscribers in its latest quarter but nevertheless managed to cut its streaming losses to around $660 million, from more than $1 billion—exceeding analyst expectations—and yet the stock still got pounded.

As Warren Buffett said last weekend regarding Berkshire’s large and losing investment in Paramount Global, the trouble is that there are “a bunch of companies who don’t want to quit” highly-expensive, extremely expensive, and low-margin streaming business. Ultimately, profitability requires fewer competitors and higher prices.

Buffett, who has always been skeptical of the economics of streaming, went on to compare the dilemma to what it was like for him to own a gas station in Omaha when he was in his 20s: There was one station across the street that kept cutting prices every time he did, and so there was just no way for him to increase his margin. In other words, unless the price that people are willing to pay increases dramatically, the streaming business is not going to be a good one for the foreseeable future. (Many on Wall Street assume that Berkshire’s Paramount position was advocated by Buffett and Charlie Munger’s heir apparents. This is not investment advice.)

It’s not just Buffett who is losing faith in the streaming business; some Wall Street media analysts are also scratching their heads more and more. Peter Supino, at Wolfe Research, downgraded Disney’s stock on May 12, without a new price target, raising the question about where the bottom might be. “With Disney+ subscriber forecasts looking risky, the linear TV outlook deteriorating, $2.5 [billion] of hard cost reductions now in consensus, and content amortization set to catch-up to cash spend in the coming years… we downgrade DIS,” Supino wrote. He adjusted his price target for the stock from $133 a share to “N/A,” which, needless to say, is more than a bit unusual and provocative.

On the call with analysts, last week, Iger sounded like it had been a sobering three months in Burbank as ongoing losses on the Disney+ side of the ledger took their toll on the company’s income statement. He had put “everything on the table” for reconsideration after he came back to the company last November, he said, and now he’s come to the realization that “the best chance for us to grow this business,” is via “a combination of the content that is on Disney+ with general entertainment.” He called what effectively would be the combination of Disney+ and Hulu into one streaming service “a very strong combination.”

I agree with the veteran cable executive Tom Rogers, who argued Thursday on CNBC that surely this was Iger’s way of saying that he knows now that Comcast is a seller of its one-third stake in Hulu and that Disney will be the buyer. Why else would Iger be talking about combining Hulu and Disney+ so publicly, setting expectations so firmly? Rogers pegged Disney’s purchase price at $9 billion, in and around the floor price set years ago. (Is Comcast selling to free up cash for a future WBD deal? Again, not investment advice…)

But Rogers also fretted that a great company, such as Disney, is running out of room, at its current stock price, to profitably manage the transition from linear TV (a business that once minted money) to streaming (a model that really only Netflix has mastered, at least when it comes to profitability). “They’re not at the precipice yet but those declines are precipitous,” Rogers said. “And while we’ve seen the whole streaming analyst world moved from sub numbers to the question of profitability, where it hasn’t moved yet and where all the media companies need to be pressed is: Is the growth of streaming as it moves toward profitability ever going to make up for the decline in the traditional television business? No one has really demonstrated yet how they believe the hole left by the decline of legacy media is going to be made up by streaming. And until that happens, it’s really hard to get too excited about anything on the streaming side, because that’s the essential question.”

So where does that leave Iger? Disney’s stock is essentially flat from when he returned. The decline of the linear TV business is accelerating and, at least for now, profits from the streaming business aren’t replacing them. It looks like Iger is going to have to add another $9 billion in debt to the company’s roughly $50 billion of existing debt to pay Comcast for Hulu, since I don’t see Brian Roberts taking Disney stock.

This is an existential moment for Iger and his legacy. There’s no erasing his earlier tenure at Disney, when he built it up into a behemoth by acquisition: the genius deals for Pixar, Marvel, LucasFilm and Fox, among others, at a cost of more than $100 billion. Disney’s market cap—equity plus debt—is now more than $200 billion. It’s the industry’s powerhouse, for sure. But it’s looking increasingly vulnerable, especially since Iger’s last big deal is looking more and more likely to be the $9 billion he would spend on Hulu, adding to the company’s debt load while also doubling down on a streaming business that has more red ink to wade through as far as the eye can see. That’s got to hurt.

But he probably has no choice. Yes, Iger (round two) has seen off the threats from the hedge fund heavyweights Nelson Peltz and Dan Loeb, but he has not solved the streaming enigma yet. Maybe that’s a task he’ll leave for his second successor.

 

[HokieRaven5]

Domestically, Guardian's Vol 3 hit $118.4m for the opening weekend. This makes it the 16th best opening weekend of the MCU franchise.

For context, the MCU average and median opening weekend's for the previous 31 movies:
$135,917,670 Average
$117,027,503 Median

So, there is a massive skew at the top end of the MCU (i.e. All the Avengers movies).

The bigger story of the Covid/Post Covid MCU movies are the lack of legs they had after opening weekend. I am very interested to see how next weekend goes.
I feel like this movie should have longer legs (total box office divided by opening weekend) than Dr. Strange (2.19) or Ant-man (2.01) but who knows. The MCU median to date has been a 2.66 ratio of total box office vs. opening.

Decent result for Guardians Vol. 3 at least in its second weekend. First sub 50% drop off in the Post Covid MCU with $60.5M+ domestically.

 

[RanDIZ]

Bob Iger and the rest of the Disney brass need to admit they have had a Bud Light moment for the last 5 years. Streaming and theatrical releases will continue to plague Disney’s financials until they go back to what’s always made them box office hits one after another.