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A mixed bag from studios for earnings reports
(L-R) Shaquile O'Neal and Conan O'Brien speak onstage during Warner Bros. Discovery Upfront 2024 on May 15, 2024, in New York City.
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Dimitrios Kambouris
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Topline:
Earnings season is well underway, and this week the major legacy entertainment studios — Disney, Warner Bros. and Fox — are divulging their second quarter earnings, to mixed receptions.
Disney’s so-so quarter: On the bright side for Disney, the company’s theatrical output of late has been stellar, with Inside Out 2 grossing more than $1.5 billion globally and Deadpool & Wolverine (which is actually in the next quarter) looking poised to cross the $1 billion threshold this week. Other areas of the business, including Disney+, which just announced a price hike, remained mostly stagnant, but the real area of concern was the theme parks division, which fell 6% in profitability.
Disastrous Warners numbers: Less than a month after a Bank of America analyst begged Warner Bros. Discovery to engage in some M&A because its current structure did not work, the company did not quell the calls for change as it floundered in its Q2 earnings. Outside of a modest 3.6 million user bump in its streaming offerings, the rest of the report was dire, with not only a 5% drop in revenue during Q2 year-over-year, but also a more than $9 billion charge owing to its financial difficulties.
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Fox hits a milestone: In its Q2 earnings report, Fox charted new ground for the legacy media company — but not in a good way. Fox Corp posted its first annual revenue loss since the company was split off, making the same amount of money in its 2022 fiscal year as it did in its 2024 fiscal year (which ended June 30), not even factoring in inflation.
For more... read the full story on The Ankler here (Disney) and here (Fox).
This story is published in partnership with The Ankler, a paid subscription publication about the entertainment industry.
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