Walt Disney Co.’s stock climbed 3.3% in extended trading Wednesday after the media giant announced earnings that beat estimates, a huge jump in streaming users and vowed to increase annual cost cuts to $7.5 billion, from $5.5 billion.
“We are most focused on profitability by the end of fiscal 2024,” Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger told CNBC in an interview after the results were announced. He said Disney expects to grow free cash flow in fiscal 2024 significantly, approaching levels last achieved pre-pandemic.
Disney
DIS,
reported fiscal fourth-quarter net income of $264 million, or 14 cents a share. After adjusting for restructuring costs and other effects, Disney reported earnings of 82 cents a share. Revenue rose 5% to $21.24 billion, from $20.15 billion a year ago.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet had, on average, expected adjusted earnings of 71 cents a share on revenue of $21.37 billion.
Disney reworked how it breaks out business segments. Its largest, entertainment, generated $9.52 billion in revenue, up 2% from the same quarter a year ago.
Experiences took in $8.2 billion, an increase of 11% from $7.3 billion last year. Sports, which includes ESPN, generated $3.9 billion. “ESPN is the No. 1 brand on TikTok,” Iger said in a conference call with analysts late Wednesday.
Iger later told analysts that the advertising market isn’t as “bad as some people think it is,” fueled by sales on Disney+ and Hulu.
Disney+ added nearly 7 million subscribers globally, leading to a substantially lower quarterly loss of $387 million, compared with a loss of $1.47 billion in the same quarter last year. Iger credited the popularity of movies like “Elemental,” “Little Mermaid” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” as well as original series “Ahsoka” and the Korean original series “Moving.”
The company said a combined Disney+/Hulu streaming app will launch in beta for bundle subscribers in December. The service officially launches in late March 2024, according to Iger.
Disney, which announced a price hike in August, is battling for streaming supremacy with media giants Apple Inc.
AAPL,
Netflix Inc.
NFLX,
Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN,
Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.
WBD,
D, Comcast Corp.
CMCSA,
and others.
As the company celebrates its 100th anniversary, it faces a labyrinth of problems. While Iger races to turn a profit with the streaming business, he must navigate a protracted actors strike, a dip in attendance at Disney World Resort in Orlando, Fla., legal antagonisms with Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and uncertainty around a CEO succession plan.
“You can look at the results today and see that not only are our domestic parks doing well, well we got some difficult, comparable or comparisons in terms of the Florida parks but the international parks are doing extremely well as is our cruise business,” Iger said in the CNBC interview.
Disney’s interim Chief Financial Officer Kevin Lansberry deemed attendance at Disneyland Park in Anaheim, Calif., as “very strong” during the analyst call.
Shares of Disney, at their lowest in nearly a decade, are down 8% since Iger returned as CEO a year ago, and have slipped 2.7% this year. The S&P 500
SPX
has climbed 14%.
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