Disney's (DIS -0.04%) recovery continued last month as the entertainment giant jumped on its earnings report and announced a new joint venture streaming service with Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox. Its fight with activist investors also continued ahead of its all-important shareholder meeting in April.
It also made other noteworthy moves, including taking a minority stake in Fortnite-maker Epic Games for $1.4 billion, and it forged a strategic joint venture with Reliance Industries in India. Those moves show the company is getting back to "building again," as CEO Bob Iger promised just months ago after spending the first year of his new tenure with the company fixing things.
According to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, the stock finished last month up 16.2%. As you can see from the chart below, most of those gains came after it reported earnings early in the month.
The Disney recovery continues
While the earnings report was the major event driving the stock higher last month, investors also reacted positively to other updates.
The day before the earnings report came out, Disney announced the new sports streaming joint venture with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, which will serve as a complement to the upcoming flagship ESPN streaming service now set for the fall of 2025. Though details, such as pricing, still need to be ironed out, and it's already facing regulatory pushback after an antitrust suit from FuboTV, investors are clearly pleased to see the company doing more to unleash the value of its content through streaming.
On Feb. 8, Disney stock jumped 11.5% after it reported fiscal first-quarter earnings. While the results weren't flawless, it showed the business is turning the corner as it progresses toward making a profit in streaming. The company also raised its dividend by 50%, offered solid guidance for the year, and said the Taylor Swift concert movie was coming to Disney+ in March. Meanwhile, its theme park business remains strong and continues to generate massive profits.
Over the rest of the month, Disney stock finished slightly higher as it seemed to benefit from news that it would raise prices at Disney World and formed a joint venture with Reliance Industries in India, which had been a challenging market for the company.
What's next for Disney
Looking ahead, Disney did not give complete guidance for the fiscal year but said it expects adjusted earnings per share to grow at least 20% from 2023 to about $4.60.
Considering its transformation to a streaming-first model is still going, that guidance is clearly a positive sign, and there's potential for profits to move considerably higher from there. Disney still has to deliver on its earlier promises, like streaming profitability, but there's room for the entertainment stock to go higher from here as well.
