Disney stock falls 7% as media giant posts mixed results

Disney reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday that topped analyst expectations for earnings but missed on revenue as the company’s entertainment business was weighed down by its TV networks and a lackluster theatrical film slate.

Disney stock closed down more than 7% on Thursday.

Here is what Disney reported for the period ended Sept. 27, compared with what Wall Street expected, according to LSEG: 

• Earnings per share: $1.11 adjusted vs. $1.05 expected
• Revenue: $22.46 billion vs. $22.75 billion expected

Net income for the quarter was $1.44 billion, or 73 cents a share, more than double the $564 million, or 25 cents per share, that Disney reported in the same period a year earlier. Adjusting for one-time items Disney reported earnings per share of $1.11. 

The company’s overall revenue for the quarter was nearly $22.5 billion, slightly less than the same quarter last year. 

Disney also said it plans to boost its dividend and double its share buyback plan for fiscal 2026.

“Overall we’re leaving the year with a lot of momentum,” Disney CFO Hugh Johnston told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday regarding the company’s streaming and experiences businesses.

Revenue for Disney’s entertainment unit fell 6% from last year to $10.21 billion, dragged down by the linear TV networks and theatrical releases. 

Disney’s TV networks, including ESPN, have been unavailable for customers of Google‘s YouTube TV, a streaming provider of the pay TV bundle since Oct. 31 because of an ongoing carriage dispute between the two companies.

Johnston told “Squawk Box” on Thursday that Disney is still in the midst of negotiations with YouTube TV, but the company was prepared for what it expected to be a “challenging battle,” and Disney is “ready to go as long as they want to.”

“We’re trying really hard, as I said, working tirelessly, to close this deal, and we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to do so on a timely enough basis to at least give consumers the opportunity to access our content over their platform,” CEO Bob Iger said on Thursday’s call with investors.

Advertising revenue for the networks, which includes broadcast network ABC and pay TV channels like FX, also suffered. Part of this was attributable to lower political advertising, or a $40 million impact compared with the same quarter last year, Disney said. The company also noted that its 2024 joint venture deal for India Hotstar impacted its linear network results.

Streaming remained the bright spot in the business as consumers continued to turn away from the pay TV bundle. Operating income for the linear networks dropped 21% to $391 million while it rose 39%, to $352 million, for streaming. The higher operating income for streaming occurred as prices increased for Disney’s streaming services. 

Iger on Thursday said the streaming business reported another quarter of profitability growth. He added full-year operating income was $1.3 billion, “up $1.2 billion from last year and $300 million ahead of our original guidance.” 

“This is a significant achievement when you consider that just three years ago our [streaming] business was running a $4 billion operating loss,” Iger said.

Disney+ was launched in 2019, and similar to its peers, took some years of losses before hitting profitability.

Disney’s streaming growth was also the result of more options for its services. Earlier this year its carriage deal with Charter Communications broadened, giving the cable TV provider’s customers access to ad-supported Hulu. Initially, Charter’s pay TV customers had been receiving only Disney+.

While about half of the streaming subscriber increase could be attributed to the Charter carriage deal, Johnston said on CNBC that “the other half was retail,” with a big portion of that coming from international markets. Disney — like its media peers Warner Bros. Discovery and Netflix — has seen most of its recent streaming growth come from global customers.

The company in August also launched its ESPN direct-to-consumer app, which mirrors all the content of the TV networks, ESPN+ and other additions. The app is also available for Charter’s pay TV subscribers.

On Thursday’s investor call, Iger said the new ESPN app helped to attract new users, and said the rate of those with access through pay TV subscriptions using the app “has been very, very encouraging.” He also said they were attracting both more advertising and new advertisers to the ESPN app.

“I think it’s a very positive step for the future of ESPN because while nothing necessarily provides future proof concepts or circumstances for a business that is constantly changing, this certainly is a step in the direction of solidifying ESPN’s future going forward,” Iger said Thursday.

ESPN’s earnings are reported in the sports segment, separate from the rest of its TV channels. Despite the continued pay TV bundle customer defections, sports has remained the last bastion of high viewership and big advertising dollars on traditional TV.

Disney stopped reporting subscriber metrics for ESPN+, and did not give guidance on the newly launched app that goes by the same name as the TV network. Johnston on CNBC Thursday said the availability of ESPN via streaming has helped to stem customer losses and has also boosted engagement with ESPN.

However, Johnston said Disney’s bundles are a driver of the ESPN app and streaming in general.

“One of the things I think we’re most excited about is fully 80% of those new retail subs on ESPN are actually bundled subs, which again, should contribute to engagement, should contribute to retention, and frankly make the service more valuable over time,” Johnston told “Squawk Box.”

The flagship streaming service Disney+ added 3.8 million paid subscribers, bringing its total to 131.6 million, while Hulu had 64.1 million customers. Disney has been in the process of integrating Hulu — which it took full control of earlier this year — into the Disney+ app. 

This marks the last time the company will report subscriber numbers and the average revenue per unit, or ARPU, for its streaming services, which includes Disney+ and Hulu.

Instead, Disney will follow in the footsteps of streaming behemoth Netflix, which earlier this year stopped updating investors on its subscriber count.

Revenue for Disney’s sports division, namely ESPN, was up 3% to roughly $4 billion, while operating income was essentially flat at $898 million when compared with the same period last year. ESPN’s domestic operating income in particular decreased due to costs associated with the launch of the app in August, as well as higher programming costs. 

Revenue for the experiences segment, which consists of theme parks, resorts and cruises, as well as consumer products, rose 6% to $8.77 billion. Operating income for the segment was up 13% to $1.88 billion. 

The current economy hasn’t affected the Disney consumer when it comes to its experiences business, Johnston said Thursday on “Squawk Box.” He noted that bookings are up 3% and spending per person at parks was also up 5% in Disney’s fiscal first quarter.

“We’ve got continued momentum there,” Johnston said.

Disney attributed the gains in its experiences and parks segment to growth in its cruise business, despite being offset by higher fleet expansion costs.

Johnston noted cruises are selling out at the same rate that they had before, even though the fleet is bigger. “So that added capacity is filling up quickly,” he added.

Disney’s expanded cruise fleet was highlighted on its Thursday call with investors. Two upcoming ships will join Disney’s fleet in the near future, Iger said Thursday, with Disney Destiny setting sail this month and Disney Adventure, the first ship ported in Asia, set to launch in March. 

Johnston added more about the experiences business on Thursday’s call with investors.

“That’s not a disclosed item, but obviously it’s a very attractive business,” Johnston said regarding the margins on the cruises segment. “We’re capable of pricing it at a good level. The guest satisfaction scores are higher than basically anything else in the company, so the margins in that business, as you would imagine, are quite attractive.”

Revenue for Disney’s domestic parks was up 6% to $5.86 billion, while international parks revenue increased 10% to $1.74 billion. Disney noted that the operating results for Disney’s international parks were boosted by growth at Disneyland Paris.

Johnston said on Thursday’s call that demand for Disney’s U.S. parks was in line with expectations, as the company had earlier factored in the opening of Comcast‘s Epic Universe in Florida this year. However, Johnston said Epic Universe “seemed to be impacting the rest of the competition in Florida more than it’s impacting us.”

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.