THB #368: The Disney Quarterly

The slow evaporation of linear viewership and advertising continues.

The slow re-routing of the streaming business continues.

The Iger re-build of Disney continues.

Quarterly after quarterly, in this last year, each of the major media companies (which does not really include Amazon and Apple yet, no matter how massive they are as companies and how much they spend in this segment) shows themselves as what they seem to be.

Since The Netflix Dip 13 months ago (April 18, 2022), the bloom is off the streaming rose.

Netflix has not recovered back to its highs of an almost $700 stock price… but it has recovered more than half of its value since it dropped to $218 a share last April, to $335 today. Why? Because “they” love Netflix like the puppy that saved their kid from a well. Economically, it makes no sense. But then again, neither did that $690 high. This is not to say Netflix was not a terrific business, then and now. My criticism of Netflix is almost always about stock price first.

Disney was $131 a share last April 19. Today, its at $101… and that is before the dip since they announced their quarterly today, down $4.58 after hours. Why? Because people don’t really dig into the quarterly details.

To be fair, Disney’s streaming subscription numbers were hypercharged by Hotstar (aka India), where the subscriber ARPU has consistently been under $2 and mostly under $1. Disney+ has claimed worldwide subs of over 150 million, but Hotstar, contributing less than 10% of the dollars that a U.S. sub contributes, has been roughly a third of that stat… which is not nothing, but is close to nothing.

So what is dragging Disney - which is successfully doing pretty much exactly what Iger laid out on his return and which Wall St suggested it wanted - after this quarterly? The worldwide total for D+ is down 4 million subs after being down 2.4 million last quarter.

Where do you think those lost subs are coming from?