Disney’s Quarterly Earnings Report is a Lot of the Same

Last Updated on: August 7th, 2018

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Image courtesy Disney

The Walt Disney Company announced today their quarterly earnings results for Q3 Fiscal Year 2018 (Q2 for all of you that go by a normal calendar) and the results were pretty good overall.

If I had to sum it up in a general statement, Disney’s typicaly under-performing segments under-performed and performing segments performed well.

Overall, the company came in at $15.228 billion in revenue (7% increase from last year) and $2.916 billion in income (23% increase from last year). Segment results saw:

  • Media Networks: Revenue up 5%; Income down 1%
  • Parks and Resorts: Revenue up 6%; Income up 15%
  • Studio Entertainment: Revenue up 20% (thanks Marvel and Pixar); Income up 11%
  • Consumer Products & Interactive Media: Revenue down 8%; Income down 10%

So, as we have grown accustomed to, Disney is killing it in the Parks and Movie Theaters and taking it on the chin in Stores and on TV.

A few tidbits gleaned from the lengthy report:

  1. The dramatic park income increase is due, in part, to increased consumer spending at the parks. Nothing comes cheap at Disney Parks and we are all willing to pay for whatever we can get our hands on.
  2. Disney cites Freeform as a reason why media network income, and more specifically cable networks, is down. They also mentioned that Freeform’s shortcomings are partially offset by an increase at ESPN. An increase at ESPN? Well, that would be great news, except they worked into that section a mention that spending was higher in the same quarter last year due to severance and contract termination costs (thus, this year is relatively better income-wise). Remember when ESPN had all those layoffs? That wasn’t a cheap move apparently.
  3. Movies are higher because Disney released Avengers: Infinity War and Incredibles 2 this quarter with Black Panther and Solo (FWIW) still kicking around. Compare the results of those movies to last year’s Cars 3 and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2 and residuals from Beauty and the Beast and Pirates of the Caribbean and you’ll see quickly why Disney had a huge increase in studio entertainment.

For a complete rundown of all things related to Disney Revenue, be sure to visit my helpful Disney Revenue Statistics post, where I keep a running tally of this stuff.

About the Author

Craig Smith
I am founder and editor of DisneyNews.us. My passion for all things Disney goes pretty far back to my first trip to Walt Disney World in the mid-80's. I have since returned to the magical place more than 20 times. I started this site when I came to the realization that I spent a significant portion of my day reading articles about Disney and watching Disney content with my 8-year old, so it made sense that I would start sharing some of what I read and see and building a little community around it. Other interests include 80's nostalgia, vintage toys, video games, LEGO, Star Wars and tech gadgets. Other sites include DMR and VideoGamesStats.com.