Disney Company / Movie / Stock Woes

[The Rover]

[The Rover]

[The Rover]

[bsbll4]

Bob Iger has tried to retire 3 or 4 times now. Lol. They should just agree that he's CEO for life and move on.

Chapek sucked, so I'm glad to see him go.

[The Rover]

Bob Iger has tried to retire 3 or 4 times now. Lol. They should just agree that he's CEO for life and move on.

Chapek sucked, so I'm glad to see him go.

Disney just recently re-upped Chapek for another 3 years...

Then basically said yesterday... "No, we're just kidding..."

[Dave's Dreidel]

For some reason Chapek, based upon some of his comments, didn't think much of Disney's animation movies. Sometimes I would hear him speak and I would think to myself "he's the CEO of Disney, right?"

[lovemachine97(Version 2)]

He (Chapek) was very, very unpopular amongst Disney park annual passholders and frequent guests. It all came to a head when, in an earnings call, he referred to an “unfavorable guest” mix at the parks, referring to passholders being a large percentage of guests, but a lot of them spending way less than the average day tickets.

Yet, when that Q4 earnings report (that eventually got Chapek fired) came out, annual passes, which had been suspended at Disneyland for new sales (renewals only), suddenly went on sale again. The parks are a solid performer for them and monthly payments mean reliable income.

In the parks he had cut in a lot of places where the average guest may not understand how it affected their experience, but it did. He cut back on maintenance, and the WSJ just had an article about increased down time for rides. They cut back on food portions and increased prices. They cut back on live entertainment, people who’d worked there for decades. Early entry for hotel guests was cut from one hour to 30 minutes before opening.

Perhaps the biggest effect was what used to be free (FastPass) with a paid option (MaxPass, same but done through the app, so you didn’t have to physically go to an attraction to book it), went away after the pandemic, lowering stand-by wait times, but then came back as a pay only service, Lightning Lane, no free version.

And because rides break down more these days AND the two most popular rides are a fee on top of that to get priority, the usual 4:1 ratio of LL guests to stand-by can increase to 25:1 and the newest Star Wars ride has done 200:1 at times due to the length of the LL, which means the wait time for stand-by guests goes way, way up. So if you don’t pay on top of that huge ticket price, it’s a significantly worse experience for you.

I do believe they’d reached a point where Chapek was damaging the brand. If you’re going to consider yourself a luxury brand with luxury prices, you can’t keep worsening the experience and charge more.

Last thing: a big former Imagineer who was featured on the Disney+ docuseries tweeted yesterday that every CEO and head of parks had come by to see what they did and learn about their history, except one: Chapek. As head of Parks and as CEO, he never went to Imagineering once.


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[The Rover]

[lovemachine97(Version 2)]

Going “woke” isn’t what is hurting their stock price. Disney has long been a leader and outspoken voice on LGBTQ+ issues. Not long ago, Disney led the way when North Carolina and Georgia were passing bad laws regarding the LGBTQ+ community. And the stock kept going up and up after that until COVID shut down nearly everything they do.

In fact, the whole point of Chapek not speaking out, initially, against the Florida law was that he was charting a different course than Iger, and he explicitly said that. Disney was the first to speak out on those 2016 laws and everyone else basically came out against it after they did.

The largest issue for Disney, going back to last year’s Q4 earnings report is the unprofitability of their streaming services, Hulu, ESPN+, and Disney+. A year ago Wall Street expected a much larger increase in subscribers than they reported and this year a much larger profit per share. They missed that latter mark by nearly 50% due to massive streaming losses. And this is all happening as they took on $70 billion in debt for 20th Century studios and content exactly one year before the COVID shutdown.

I know, don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.


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[ziggysmalls]

Its not the only thing but its also foolhardy to say its not having any effect. If 1% of the populace decides to not engage in Disney products which does include ESPN and other entitities because of their wokeness, its going to have an effect.

I know quite a few people that don't buy as much Disney products as they used to for their kids.

Again its not the only thing but to think it doesn't have an effect is kind of sticking ones head in the sand.

[lovemachine97(Version 2)]

Maybe, but how do you explain them shouting even sooner and louder a few years ago and the stock continuing up? The bathroom issue was just as big of a deal at the time.

If you’re willing to think Disney is sexually grooming children you probably weren’t buying a lot to begin with.

It would also be tough to discern purposeful boycotting of Disney films and general fatigue with Marvel plus generally poor box office receipts overall.

Demand for Disney parks is as high as ever. They keep increasing subscriber numbers for streaming. So how do we quantify that the stock has taken a hit over a position on a law that no one is talking about anymore?


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[T.B.]

The big anchor is the streaming service. It's a money pit not just for Disney+, but for Netflix, HBOMax, Prime, etc.

An example is Netflix was preparing to sink millions into buying a huge, empty Ikea building in Burbank to start up their own in-house content production company and when the Pandemic happened, they had to put the brakes on that plan. Now that production is getting back to normal and their legacy content from other studios has dried up thanks to Disney gobbling up other studios like Fox and other studios having their own streaming services, Netflix is drowning in debt and stuck relying on foreign content producers to get cheap shows and mini-series from places like India, Asia and Europe.

All these channels have been pouring money into producing and obtaining original content but their subscriber numbers have either flatlined or are dropping as people either jump back and forth month to month between services or former subscribers have simply pared back on spending money for individual services. People are realizing it's getting cheaper and less a PITA to stick with Cable, Satellite or even simple over-air broadcasting. The last half-decade is proving that the model of numerous streaming channel choices with subscriber driven profits for streaming tv is unsustainable without massive ad revenue (ie: lots of commercials) and consolidation of choices which means more content over fewer streamers.

[MD 5150]

The big anchor is the streaming service. It's a money pit not just for Disney+, but for Netflix, HBOMax, Prime, etc.

An example is Netflix was preparing to sink millions into buying a huge, empty Ikea building in Burbank to start up their own in-house content production company and when the Pandemic happened, they had to put the brakes on that plan. Now that production is getting back to normal and their legacy content from other studios has dried up thanks to Disney gobbling up other studios like Fox and other studios having their own streaming services, Netflix is drowning in debt and stuck relying on foreign content producers to get cheap shows and mini-series from places like India, Asia and Europe.

All these channels have been pouring money into producing and obtaining original content but their subscriber numbers have either flatlined or are dropping as people either jump back and forth month to month between services or former subscribers have simply pared back on spending money for individual services. People are realizing it's getting cheaper and less a PITA to stick with Cable, Satellite or even simple over-air broadcasting. The last half-decade is proving that the model of numerous streaming channel choices with subscriber driven profits for streaming tv is unsustainable without massive ad revenue (ie: lots of commercials) and consolidation of choices which means more content over fewer streamers.

Too many streaming channels will put your bill back up there with cable and satellite. Lots of programming that you will miss out on with the later two, but not necessarily better programming. Too many in the streaming business has watered down the quality of shows.

Or get a VPN and a jailbroken loaded firestick. But that's pretty sketchy.

[Daisy Hill]

The big anchor is the streaming service. It's a money pit not just for Disney+, but for Netflix, HBOMax, Prime, etc.

An example is Netflix was preparing to sink millions into buying a huge, empty Ikea building in Burbank to start up their own in-house content production company and when the Pandemic happened, they had to put the brakes on that plan. Now that production is getting back to normal and their legacy content from other studios has dried up thanks to Disney gobbling up other studios like Fox and other studios having their own streaming services, Netflix is drowning in debt and stuck relying on foreign content producers to get cheap shows and mini-series from places like India, Asia and Europe.

All these channels have been pouring money into producing and obtaining original content but their subscriber numbers have either flatlined or are dropping as people either jump back and forth month to month between services or former subscribers have simply pared back on spending money for individual services. People are realizing it's getting cheaper and less a PITA to stick with Cable, Satellite or even simple over-air broadcasting. The last half-decade is proving that the model of numerous streaming channel choices with subscriber driven profits for streaming tv is unsustainable without massive ad revenue (ie: lots of commercials) and consolidation of choices which means more content over fewer streamers.

You know what is a problem with the streamers? Maybe it is just me, but I doubt it. Keeping track of shows. With cable, you had one system to access and within that system you could search for all the networks and all the shows and set your recording preferences so that you didn't miss a show or a new season of a show you had been watching

If you stream and you have a subscription to Apple and watch 2 or 3 shows there, and another couple on Disney , a few on Netflix, a couple on Peacock, and a couple on HBO, one on Showtime, a couple on Acorn and couple on Amazon etc, there is no one "hub" to go to to to check on new episodes or new seasons. I have been watching shows and not realized that there are a couple of episodes of ( for instance) Cobra Kai, and Rezervation Dogs that I missed. Or when does the new season of Somebody Somewhere or Akwafina from Queens start?

Its more complicated than just scrolling thru one system. You have to open each streaming service and search that service or your "my stuff". The best thing about cable is scrolling thru the menu. If spectrum had the ability of offering me each of these streamers as a channel, I would probably go back to cable, but I am not going to pay huge fees for cable then add all the streamers on top of that, so I had to choose. I pay as much or more than I paid thru spectrum, but I have the shows I want to watch

Right now I think I can add the spectrum app to apple tv but I can't add apple tv as a spectrum cable channel for instance. I can't watch Acorn or Britbox or Netflix, the Broadway channel or Prime.

[TJENZ]

Someone needs to bundle all the streaming services together and sell that as a package.

They could call it "cable" or something.