5 BIG Updates Disney Announced This Week

We get a look into the inner workings of the Walt Disney Company each quarter of the year.

At the end of the quarter, Disney holds a financial earnings call/report which gives us a glimpse at how the company’s revenue performed. We may see different areas up or down in terms of profit, but we also see how the company did as a whole. On November 8th, 2023, Disney held its FY23 quarter 4 call which also included the whole year’s report. Here’s what we learned!

Did Disney+ lose or gain subscribers?

During the Q3 earnings call, we learned that Disney+ had a total of 146.1 million subscribers, which was down from Q2. This quarter we learned that the streaming platform has grown by 7 million core subscribers over the last quarter to 150 million total subcribers.

We know streaming is CEO Bob Iger’s biggest priority so it’s likely we’ll continue to see improvements and changes to Disney+. Disney continues to expect the streaming business to be profitable by Q4 of Fiscal Year 2024, though that progress may not look linear.

These numbers still include Hotstar at 37.6 million of the subs, with core Disney+ subscriptions accounting for 112.6 million of the total. Hulu has 48.5 million subscribers as of Q4, while ESPN+ has reached 26 million.

Did Disney+ gain or lose money?

Disney+ has notoriously been a money pit for the company by continuing to lose money. However, in Q3, the streaming platform increased its revenues and its operating loss decreased from $1.1 billion to $0.5 billion.

This quarter, Q4, we learned that overall, Disney’s streaming business lost $387 million — a year-over-year improvement from a $1.4 billion loss during the same quarter in 2022.

Are the parks still making money?

Now that the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser closed its doors permanently and price increases continued, we’re all curious to know how Disney World performed this quarter.

So, how did the parks do? Well, Experiences operating income increased by over 30% versus the prior-year quarter, with year-over-year growth across all international sites, Disney Cruise Line, Disney Vacation Club, and Disneyland Resort.

For the fourth quarter, Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products reported $8.16 billion in revenue. But for Fiscal Year 2023 overall, Disney Parks brought in $32.5 billion in revenue, an increase over FY 2022 which ended at $28.7 billion.

Disney says the increase in operating income was due to growth at Disney Cruise Line from higher prices and average passenger days, the closure of the Starcruiser, higher attendance at Disneyland, and more.

How did the Walt Disney Company do overall?

As for this quarter, Q4, the company reported net income of $264 million, an increase from last year’s $162 million during the same quarter. Revenue increased by 5% to $21.24 billion.

But for the year, Disney did fairly well. Hopefully, we’ll see these results help the struggling stock prices of the company. 

SAG-AFTRA/Writers Strike

Iger hasn’t been quiet about his feelings on the SAG-AFTRA/WGA Strike. Though the Writers Guild strike is over, the SAG-AFTRA strike continues, and Iger commented on the strike when asked about it.

He shared, “I have the utmost respect for actors — they are incredibly important to us for obvious reasons. I’m optimistic that we’ll figure that out relatively soon.” He went on to say that any impact on Disney’s business due to the strike has been “negligible” and that “we’re all very hard at work to try to solve this — even as we speak.”

We’ll continue to bring you updates and announcements from Disney’s fourth quarter earnings call, so stay tuned so AllEars for more!

All the Confirmed Land Expansions for Disney World and Disneyland!

What are your thoughts on these results? Let us know in the comments!

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