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

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.