Disney has been hit again with another lawsuit from investors over the alleged sleight of hand accounting the company used to hide streaming losses.
09.08.2023 - 23:55 / deadline.com
Disney interim chief financial officer Kevn Lansberry said the company is “very comfortable with our current liquidity position” as the time approaches for it to buy Comcast’s one-third stake in Hulu.
Comcast can “put” its stake to Disney, or Disney can call it in, early next year. Disney CEO Bob Iger said back in May that “cordial” and “constructive” discussions had started with Comcast on that.
The floor for the “put” by Comcast is about $9.2 billion dollars, he noted on a conference call after Disney earnings in response to a question about the company’s ability to fund the transaction. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts has called the streaming service “very valuable” and said he hopes the stake will fetch more that that.
Lansberry said Disney has “about $11.5 billion of cash on our balance sheet. We’ve got $10.5 billion worth of revolving credit facilities and commercial paper. And we will have plenty of future cash flow to help fund all of this going forward.”
Despite recent headwinds, Disney still has one of the strongest balance sheets among media companies.
“We made significant progress recently de-levering coming out of the pandemic. We are prioritizing free cash flow at the company and are being really disciplined and smart about how we go about allocating capital,” said the interim CEO, who stepped in when Christine McCarthly exited in June.
Disney reported $1.6 billion in free cash flow last quarter.
He said Disney is still planning to recommend its board approve a modest dividend at the end of the year for the first time since the payout was cut in May of 2020 to conserve cash during Covid.
By subscribing, I agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google
Disney has been hit again with another lawsuit from investors over the alleged sleight of hand accounting the company used to hide streaming losses.
EXCLUSIVE: Nautilus, the U.K. live-action Captain Nemo series commissioned by Disney+ two years ago, is no longer headed to the streamer, Deadline has learned.
EXCLUSIVE: Amid a focus on content curation and Disney-owned IP, Disney+ is not proceeding with The Spiderwick Chronicles, its live-action series adaptation of the popular children’s fantasy books, Deadline has learned.
Disney+ has “pretty much” hit its target of creating 50 original international titles, according to its Europe content boss.
WGA leaders met face-to-face with key CEOs on Tuesday evening as executives sought to pitch the guild on their most recent contract offer in the hopes of ending the nearly four-month-old strike. Late Tuesday, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers released details of the contract offer presented to the WGA on Aug. 11.
Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer TSG Entertainment, which has invested more than $3 billion in 140 Fox films including “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “The Shape of Water,” accused Disney in a lawsuit on Tuesday of using Hollywood accounting tricks to cheat it out of hundreds of millions of dollars. The slate financier alleged that Disney had engaged in “self-dealing” by diverting Fox films from a lucrative HBO license to its own Disney+ and Hulu platforms. The lawsuit also alleges that Fox engaged in “sweetheart” deals when it licensed its films to the FX cable channel.
So it looks like there might be a big change to the planned Marvel/Disney+ release schedule in 2023.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis urged The Walt Disney Co. to drop its lawsuit against him, while telling CNBC that he has “moved on” from his battle with company and that it should drop the lawsuit against him.
As the ongoing WGA strike hits 100 days, the entirety of Hollywood wonders how long both that and the SAG-AFTRA strike will last. In the case of WGA, this strike is no officially longer than the 2007-2008 strike, but has a ways to go before it hits the 1988 writers’ strike 153 days, the longest in the union’s history. Disney CEO Bob Iger hopes neither strike lasts that long, though.
Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney is coming for the streaming password-sharing freeloaders. Taking a page from Netflix’s playbook, Disney chief Bob Iger announced that the media conglomerate has put a priority on finding ways to convert password-borrowing users into paying customers.
Disney CEO Bob Iger shook up the entertainment industry and Wall Street last month when he declared to CNBC at Sun Valley that linear television may be non-core and that he’s looking for partners for ESPN as the company pivots to streaming.
Hulu will increase its ad-free subscription from $14.99 to $17.99 per month.Disney+ will also see a jump from $10.99 to $13.99 for its monthly ad-free plan.And before you and your close circle decide to chip in for a shared account, you should know that Disney CEO Bob Iger also announced Wednesday that the company is “actively exploring ways to address account sharing and the best options for paying subscribers to share their accounts with friends and families.”In other words: a crackdown on password sharing, perhaps similar to what Netflix introduced in May, is coming to Hulu. What’s more, the company introduced a new ad-free Disney+ and Hulu bundle — without ESPN+ — called “Duo Premium,” available Sept.
Disney’s giant theme park division was first out of the gate in a post-pandemic recovery, showing giant jumps in revenue and profit due to pent-up demand. But the engine is sputtering.
Get ready to pay more for Disney+ and Hulu if you’re a subscriber.
“It is my fervent hope that we quickly find solutions to the issues that have kept us apart these past few months, “said Bob Iger today of the Writers Guild and actors’ union’s strikes on Disney’s earnings call. “And I am personally committed to achieve this result.”
Disney is following through on stated plan to raise streaming prices (welcome news to investors if not to many consumers), as well as launching a bundled version of Disney+ and Hulu and expanding the ad-supported version of Disney+ to Europe and Canada.
Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney, trying to swing its streaming business into the black, has set substantial price hikes for Disney+ and Hulu standalone premium plans in the U.S. — while also rolling out a heavily discounted Disney+/Hulu ad-free combo bundle. As of Oct.
Cynthia Littleton Business Editor The Walt Disney Co. saw its streaming losses narrow in the second quarter amid an exodus of 12.5 million subscribers from its Disney+ Hotstar streaming platform in India. For the quarter, Disney exceeded Wall Street’s targets on earnings per share but missed on revenue.
Disney saw direct-to-consumer losses shrink and adjusted EPS top estimates for the three months ended in June as CEO Bob Iger said the company’s on track to exceed $5.5 billion in anticipated cost savings.
Naman Ramachandran Controversial influencer and former professional kickboxer Andrew Tate has been released from house arrest in Romania, pending trial. Tate and his brother Tristan were arrested in March and charged in June on rape and human trafficking offences, which they deny. On Friday, their house arrest was lifted and they are now allowed to move around the Romanian capital, Bucharest and in the Ilfov district where they live.