**Update** While the stock was initially up to over $116 per share, the news from Disney that Q3 was not looking good and theme park attendance was returning to normal drove the stock price down to $105-$106 per share.
The Walt Disney Company’s stock jumped up to over $116 per share ahead of their Q2 earnings call today. Improvements in streaming seem to be helping the stock performance as their earnings report was unveiled to investors and the media.
Disney+ gained 6.3 million subscribers, bringing its total subscriber number to 117.6 million, while Hulu jumped to 50.2 million. Average revenue per user (RPU) increased 44 cents this quarter, likely due to the deal with Charter Communications for Spectrum customers, which started during Q2 and helped improve subscriber numbers.
ESPN+ is still losing money, but it’s a fraction of what it was a year ago. This time, the loss was only $18 million, down from almost $660 million in Q2 last year. ESPN will be added to Disney+ this fall.
Streaming (minus ESPN+) has reached profitability. Disney still feels that streaming will be completely profitable by the end of Q4 this year.
Theme parks, consumer products, and experiences rose 10%, hitting $8.4 billion for the quarter. Operating profit also increased 12%, bringing that total to about $2.3 billion.
Revenue increased to $22.1 billion, up from $21.8 billion last year. This was above expectations of $20.53 billion. Disney ended up ahead with an operating income of $47 million. Q2 last year ended with a loss of $587 million.
Disney made sure to mention that Q3 is not looking great, so I’m expecting a lot of drops. However, it sounds like a lot of good news, with many warnings about Q3 but improvements in Q4.
What do you think? Comment and let us know!
Source: Deadline
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