Friday, November 7, 2008

Mr. Iger's Wild Ride...


With the economy in a downturn right now, the Walt Disney Company is having to deal with weakened demand for its products, from toys, cruises, movies and even theme parks...

This Yahoo article mentions several interesting points:


* Disney's shares slid 9 percent in extended trade but recovered a bit after executives announced plans to discount stays at Walt Disney World to stimulate bookings in the first half of 2009.

* A 13 percent decline in quarterly net income due in part to a bad debt charge. Revenue, however, topped Wall Street analysts' estimates.

* Net earnings of $760 million, down from net earnings of $877 million, in last year's fourth quarter.

Not all the news was bad...

* Revenue rose 6 percent to $9.45 billion from $8.93 billion a year earlier. Analysts, on average, expected revenue of $9.33 billion for the quarter, according to Reuters Estimates.

* Attendance at Disney's American theme parks is down only 1 percent so far in the current quarter and bookings for the first two quarters of fiscal 2009 are down "a little under 10 percent" from last year.

* Theme parks showed a 7 percent increase in revenue during the most recent quarter, helped by higher guest spending.

All in all, a mixed bag of things. Hopefully consumer confidence will bounce back by this time next year an we'll look back on this as a blip on the radar. Until then, we'll stay cautiously optimistic.

No pessimism to see here, move along. Move along...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We will bounce back.

Anonymous said...

"Bolt" is going to be huge, which will certainly help. I think it's the type of movie the public is hungry for. "Madagascar 2" is fun, but "Bolt" has a storyline people can identify with far more. Who can resist a great story about a kid and her faithful (and in this case, super-powered) dog?