There are few stocks that are as well positioned to benefit from both the stay-at-home economy of the past year and a half and the reopening as Walt Disney (DIS 1.44%). In this Fool Live clip, recorded on June 14, Fool.com contributor Toby Bordelon explains why.
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Toby Bordelon: We're heading out, we're having fun and I think one company that's going to benefit from that is Disney. What I want to focus here on is the theme parks, right? Let me show you something here. I'm going to show people a chart right here. This is Disney's annual revenue by segment. Now they just did a restructuring. This is full-year results from last year, so this is what it was before they restructured.
But the key thing I want you to see here is take a look at that parks, experiences, and products. I'm assuming theme parks is in that unit. That was in fiscal year 2019, the single biggest segment for Disney in terms of revenue generation. Fell off a cliff in the pandemic, as one might expect. You look what we've got for the first six months of the year, you can see that even more. This is with the restructuring but even then you see the parks, experience, and product, 50% down year-over-year for the first six months of the fiscal year, which for the six months ended 2020 was basically pre-pandemic. What was a big revenue generator for them just didn't exist for the past year. Theme parks closed, credit shutdown for another month happening that was a problem there.
What was a plus for Disney last year? Either you guys subscribers to Disney+, I'm sure a lot of our viewers here, I know my family is, Disney+ has done great. Really great growth over the past year. There are over 100 million users now, really in record time. Let's think that through what happens when we start reopening, people go back to the theme parks, and Disney+ is still there. I think we are going to see a Disney stronger and better than it was pre-pandemic and there is a reason for people to come back to the theme parks. We've got things like the Star Wars Hotel, which looks really cool inside the park. Avengers Campus. We've got the new Avatar movies starting to roll out. That was part of 20th Century Fox now part of the Disney umbrella. They've got an Avatar part of the Disney parks out there now. There are things people have not seen.
People who are big Disney attenders want to go back to get these new experiences and people who just haven't been as Matt mentioned before in a year, have that urge to get back there. This is going to drive revenue. I think people are going to be heading to Disney in record numbers to the extent that they allow as far as their capacity will allow and then we haven't even started talking about the movies. We've got Black Widow kicking off in the theaters next month. The Marvel movies are rolling out at a pretty high pace to make up for the lost year last year. Again, the Avatar sequels, stuff is happening all over. Disney is doing really well now. I expect good things from them, good times ahead. This I think is going to be a great summer of Disney fun for folks and I'm looking forward to it.