I guess that's why the stock price has dropped to a 9 year low and several analyst have moved to "sell" suggesting its going even lower.
OT: Suzy Kolber laid off by espn
- Thread starter Smashcat
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The stock price isn’t really relevant to the specific point he was making. You made the assertion that Disney wasn’t profitable and wouldn’t be for a couple of years. He simply pointed out that Disney was in fact still profitable and your statement was not accurate.
Rather than focusing on the stock price, I think the question you should be asking yourself is: how did you come to the conclusion that Disney wasn’t profitable if you spent time looking at their financials?
I also listened to the last 2 investor calls the co made. They are pushing back huge losses in the hopes of D+ picking up steam and covering. Showing a profit on the books is just a function of how they do their accounting. Aug quarterly call should tell a lot more. Disney has to buy the rest of Hulu in early '24. It would be like me saying I'm profitable by leaving off my mortgage and insurance payments until next year.
Just for relation to this thread I'm just saying to not expect job cuts to stop or all programming to remain static. I've just had this convo with people I know who are in the "It's Disney, they have plenty of money" and just letting you guys know that that is no longer the case.
I've just been following this as an investment thing. I've shorted the stock twice the last year and made a decent chunk so just passing on info. And it may not even be all negative. Disney is looking to do partnerships. They've already reached out to the nfl, and maybe the SEC could even negotiate a more prominent role on the network and basically circumvent the ncaa. Like I said... anything could happen the next year with where they are. The Aug call could be fireworks though.
Which portions of the earnings calls led you to believe that Disney is currently overstating profits?
Walt Disney (DIS) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript | The Motley Fool
DIS earnings call for the period ending December 31, 2022.
www.fool.com
Walt Disney (DIS) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript | The Motley Fool
DIS earnings call for the period ending March 31, 2023.
www.fool.com
One part where they said they had a $700 million loss that they weren't posting til q3... for one.Which portions of the earnings calls led you to believe that Disney is currently overstating profits?
Walt Disney (DIS) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript | The Motley Fool
DIS earnings call for the period ending December 31, 2022.
Walt Disney (DIS) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript | The Motley Fool
DIS earnings call for the period ending March 31, 2023.
A $700 million loss is not enough to have made Disney unprofitable in Q1/Q2. Over those 6 months, net income was $2.55 billion. Nor did I see any discussion of a $700 million loss in the earnings call transcripts, so I’ll just have to take your word on that.
That said, why do you believe that this $700 million loss you referenced should have been posted in Q1 or Q2, rather than in Q3?
I don't. I'm just saying that q1 call was disappointing. q2 call was bad... without the $700 million loss included into that quarter. So you have losses looming in other sectors and a $700 million loss is the first bookmark in your q3 entry. Same with Pixar, Lucas Films, Marvel and Disney studios are all looking at posting losses for the year. The parks have always cleaned up any losses in the past but reports the last 45 days are really negative... granted, they are negative for Universal too but Disney is looking to be worse than Universal for park attendance drop... and that is projected and could be wrong but I'm going by people who follow that stuff, It's not me saying it.
I'm clearly not convincing you and I'm not going to try further. I'll just say that 2 former Disney exec's are being approached to rejoin Disney to assist in packaging properties to make them as profitable as possible for sale... and also to help make the streaming services profitable. One of these 2 guys are assumed to replace Iger if all goes well. Also another rumor out there is that ESPN is on the table for sale. Iger doesn't want to sell it but apparently board members are pushing him to attach it to ABC to see how much more money they can get out of ABC.
But Disney has fired 3 exec's, their CEO and had their CFO retired early in the last 6ish months. Chapek, former ceo, was fired while he was out of town at an Elton John concert. That's not what well run co's do usually.
And an edit to say.... I went back to reread this to see why you guys were coming against what I said so hard and realized what I said was probably taken wrong. I see how it looked like I was saying that they are losing money now as a co but that wasn't what I meant. Obviously, they posted the profits they posted. I was trying to say that they have spent billions on bad investments that aren't going to pay off and people are starting to realize it. Some of the losses I'm talking about are not yet realized and I was not making that clear. I should of pointed out how bad Disney was bleeding cash and when you compare that to the profits it's unsustainable.
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Holly probably makes much less than Suzy didThey nix Suzy but they keep Holly Rowe? Have they lost their minds?
First off, I’m sorry if it came across like I was coming hard at you as that’s not what I was trying to do. I was just genuinely curious and trying to understand what you were seeing that led you to say Disney wasn’t profitable when then are in fact a profitable company. Apologies for that and glad we cleared up the confusion.
That said, just because I was pointing out that Disney is profitable, that doesn’t mean that I think that everything is going great at Disney. They have some significant challenges to overcome. I agree that some acquisitions may not have been ideal. Comcast forced them to pay too much for Fox and they have some high debt from that and from the bonds issued because of COVID. I disagree, however, that this is a huge problem. While their debt is higher than it should be, it’s still manageable and they have cushion to go a bit higher if needed.
Disney really has two big problems: streaming and ESPN. On the streaming side, it’s not a profitable business yet. They basically sacrificed streaming profitability on the altar of rapid subscriber growth, and they have to get that fixed. I think it’s reasonable to believe that Disney has a path to making streaming a profitable business. They raised the Disney+ price nearly 40% this year in the US and barely lost any subscribers, and are trying to rein in content costs. It seems to me that question for streaming is less about can they make a profit and more about can they make it profitable enough?
ESPN is a much bigger challenge and I don’t know if Disney has the ability to fix this. Cord cutters are a threat to top line revenue and the rising cost of sports rights are hammering the bottom line.
That’s why they brought back the two former execs to try and find a solution and why they’re looking at options like selling an equity stake to the NBA, NFL and MLB. They have to find a way to secure content at a reasonable price, because they know sports drives subscribers. If you look closely at Disney+’s subscribers losses the past two quarters, those losses are almost entirely due to sports. Disney lost the rights to broadcast cricket matches in India, and that’s what drove almost all of the decline in Disney+ subscribers.
But even if they fix the sports content problem, cord cutting is still an issue and simply launching ESPN as a streaming channel won’t necessarily fix it because they’ll have to charge a huge price to make up on all the lost affiliate fees from cable subscribers that never even watch ESPN. ESPN is also responsible for the Disney Channel’s revenue because Disney can strong arm cable companies by forcing them to pay for both ESPN and Disney Channel as a bundle.
ESPN has been a major driver of Disney’s profits for years and appears to be heading towards becoming a dying business. And I don’t know that there is a good fix for that.
You seem pretty up on most of this. I would just suggest to imagine that Disney is not able to keep raising prices to cover fewer eyeballs. They have had their cost rise above inflation while their revenue goes up only slightly. It's just a trend thing. They had $21 billion in cash equivalents about 5 years ago. $19 billion in '20. $16 billion in '21 and they are sitting at about $12 billion right now... or close enough to that. They have to pay Comcast about $20 billion next year (reportedly). If they issue more debt at a time when interest rates are high.. that's bad. If they sell stock at a time their stock price is low... that might actually be worse.
Disney is going to lose over $1billion on their movies and tv shows this year. Their movies were making them millions of dollars per year for the last decade +. Cost up and return down. It's like that across the entire co. Parks revenues were up while traffic was down last year due to ticket hikes but they have finally hit the spot where people just can't afford to go like in the past.
If you know of or look into Nelson Peltz, he is an activist shareholder that has been talking about the problems for a while. They didn't just overpay for Fox. They overpaid by $20billion. Disney has just been throwing money around faster than they can make it.
Hulu is absolute trash compared to Netflix. We have it and I can't remember the last time I even turned it on. Was probably by accident. What kind of garbage are you watching and thinking it remotely compares???
Main reason I got is was the 180 dollar cable bill. Right now I'm watching Suits on Netflix actually. Never said they compare. Pretty much it was an impulse dissension. KENTUCKY was on ESPN and I didn't have it. So that panic set in you the feeling I'm sure. It coverd everything I needed at the moment because I had Netflix and couldn't get live content. So the package I bought got me everything I need. Live Sports man. That's really it.
I don't think you are talking about the same product. The Hulu he is talking about is live television, not the movie version of Hulu, although it comes with both. Hulu + replaces dish network, cable, etc. It does not compete with Netflix. When you sign up for Hulu +, you also get Disney +, Espn+, and traditional Hulu. The plus is live television, including local channels.
85 per month. You get Hulu-Hulu live witch is all live channels, fox, A&E. Network television I guess they call it. Then you get ESPN and ESPN+ that includes all ESPN and there's a bunch. SEC, ACC Big 10 channels. Then you get Disney, that is like Netflix only all Disney stuff. Don't watch it much but good to have for the children when they are over. So it's the Hulu-ESPN+-Disney. I recommend this product. I get more games than you can watch, not just the main sports it's everything. You can watch rifle competitions like UK vs Alabama for example. It's streaming TV so you have to have WiFi. You get log ins so you can watch anywhere. I was paying 190 for Comcast and didn't get anything. Espn and ESPN 2 I think. UK was on SEC network. I panicked lol. Bought the package and have loved it since
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Scott Van Pelt lands ‘Monday Night Countdown’ job as makeover complete after ESPN layoffs
ESPN has set its “Monday Night Countdown” crew.
nypost.com
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