Disney on Thursday reported an 82% decline in quarterly operating income, the result of steep losses at its coronavirus-devastated theme park division and the postponement of major movie releases.
But Wall Street had already decided that Disney’s overall results for the quarter, the fourth in the company’s fiscal year, would be "apropos of nothing,” as Todd Juenger, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, wrote in a Nov. 2 research report. Investors are confident that Disney’s theme park empire will come roaring back when a vaccine is deployed — and all they really care about, at least for the moment, is streaming, streaming, streaming.
To that end, Disney said its flagship streaming service, Disney+, had 73.7 million subscribers as of Oct. 3, surpassing the low end of its initial five-year goal after only 11 months. Disney also owns Hulu (36.6 million subscribers, up 27% from a year earlier) and an ESPN-branded streaming service (10.3 million, triple the number from a year earlier). Disney will soon introduce Star, an overseas version of Hulu stocked with programming from Disney properties like ABC, FX, Freeform, Searchlight and 20th Century Studios, which Rupert Murdoch sold to the company last year.