There's a storm brewing at Walt Disney (DIS -0.04%). Some of its recent theatrical releases have disappointed at the box office. Cord-cutting and ad market weakness are weighing on its media networks business. Losses continue at Disney+, and now subscriber growth has stalled. Even its iconic theme parks are reportedly experiencing a lull.
Wall Street isn't impressed. The shares have been flat in 2023, a year that finds most consumer-facing stocks moving higher. Disney stock has shed more than half of its value since peaking in early 2021.
The media giant has a chance to break out of its current rut when it reports its fiscal third-quarter results shortly after Wednesday's market close. The bar is set low when it comes to expectations. It will also be CEO Bob Iger's first earnings call since Disney's board extended his contract through 2026, giving him another two years in the sandbox to help turn things around.
As the mouse earns
Between box office flops and the surprising slowdown at its gated attractions, it's been a cruel late spring and early summer for Disney. Analysts see revenue clocking in at $22.5 billion for the fiscal third quarter, a modest 5% year-over-year increase. It would be the company's weakest top-line growth in more than two years.
The bottom-line outlook is even more problematic. Analysts are bracing for a profit of $0.97 a share, an 11% decline from where it landed a year earlier. The trend hasn't been kind on that front. Wall Street pros were modeling a fiscal third-quarter profit of $1.29 three months ago, and then whittled that net income forecast down to $1.11 a share two months ago and $1.06 just last month.
Image source: Disney.
The media companies that have already reported this earnings season aren't seeing a recovery in the ad market. Strike-related production shutdowns will soon start to wreak havoc on the pipeline of fall programming, and Disney is already pushing out theatrical releases to give itself some more wiggle room.
Cutting content costs was the cornerstone of the $5.5 billion in annualized cost savings that Iger is hoping to achieve by the end of next year, but this is not the way that anybody wanted to get there.
The same Disney that has historically dominated the box office has been silent this year. The three top draws domestically in 2023 belong to rival studios. Disney+ was the platform that sent the stock to all-time highs more than two years ago, but now it's going through some growing pains.
The theme parks that have been a steady source of growth coming out of the pandemic might have also hit the wall. SeaWorld Entertainment (SEAS -0.67%) -- sharing a heavy concentration of its parks in Central Florida and Southern California, like Disney -- reported disappointing financial results on Tuesday morning. It saw its attendance levels and revenue decline slightly with a much sharper drop on the bottom line.
Things don't have to go badly for Disney shareholders this week. A soft quarter has already been discounted. The key to a bounce in shares of the media stock could be how convincing Iger is in sharing his vision for turning Disney around now that he has a longer leash.
No pressure, Iger. You just have the weight of Disney as a market laggard on your shoulders heading into a telltale financial update. There's still time to script a happy Hollywood ending.
