Bob Chapek
During The Walt Disney Company’s third-quarter earnings report, the group confirmed that it will launch an ad-supported streaming tier of Disney+ on December 8 at a monthly price of US$7.99, the same cost that Disney+ customers are already paying. This will be accompanied by a general increase in the prices of the company's streaming offer: the ad-free tier of Disney+ is rising to US$10.99 per month, while Hulu’s ad-supported tier will go up to US$7.99 per month, and its ad-free tier will hike its cost to US$14.99 per month.
According to the company’s third-quarter earnings report, Disney+ added 14.4 million subscribers in the period that ended on June 30. This figure raises the total number of global subscribers across all of The Walt Disney Company’s platforms to 221 million, while Disney+, in particular, now has 152.1 million. Financially speaking, The Walt Disney Company posted strong results for the third quarter, even beating analysts' expectations. In detail, the company reached US$21.5 billion in revenue, and most analysts expected that figure to be around US$20.68 billion. Moreover, earnings per share were US$1.07 cents, also beating analysts’ estimates of about US$1.00 EPS.
Furthermore, domestic channels revenues for the quarter increased 2% to US$5.7 billion, and operating income increased 15% to US$2.1 billion, reflecting higher results at both Cable and Broadcasting. According to the group, the increase at Cable was due to growth in advertising revenue and, to a lesser extent, a decrease in marketing costs and an increase in affiliate revenue, while the increase at Broadcasting was due to higher results at ABC and, to a lesser extent, at the owned television station.
“We had an excellent quarter, with our world-class creative and business teams powering outstanding performance at our domestic theme parks, big increases in live-sports viewership, and significant subscriber growth at our streaming services. With 14.4 million Disney+ subscribers added in the fiscal third quarter, we now have 221 million total subscriptions across our streaming offerings,” said Bob Chapek, Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company.
“We continue to transform entertainment as we near our second century, with compelling new storytelling across our many platforms and unique immersive physical experiences that exceed guest expectations, all of which are reflected in our strong operating results this quarter,” Chapek added.
● AUDIENCE DEMAND
As The Walt Disney Company announced its earnings report, Parrot Analytics revealed that the company remains the market leader in many key measures of audience demand. For example, Disney is number one in US corporate demand share (19.7%), although its lead over the second place is smaller than ever following the official merger of Warner Bros. Discovery (17.8%).
At the same time, streaming platform Disney+’s global demand share grew faster than any other service in the latest quarter (up from 8.8% to 9.9%). Hulu (19.2%) is just behind Netflix (19.4%) in on-platform demand share, and a theoretical combination of Hulu and Disney+ (25.2%) would healthily beat out the coming combination of HBO Max and Discovery+ (17.9%) in US on-platform demand share.
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