Status: 11/11/2021 9:39 a.m.
The business of the entertainment company Walt Disney is surprisingly bad despite the amusement parks open. The streaming service Disney + in particular continues to lag behind Netflix in the battle for new subscribers.
The growth of the streaming service Disney + is stalling. With 118 million subscribers at the end of the second fiscal year, a good two million customers had been added within the previous three months, announced the US entertainment group Disney. Analysts had expected significantly higher growth and on average expected growth to at least 125 million subscribers.
Disney + was launched around two years ago with a lot of advertising and cheap opening offers. Initially, the number of streaming customers rose rapidly, thanks in part to successful shows such as “The Mandalorian” from the “Star Wars” universe. With the number of users now published, Disney + remains significantly behind its major competitor Netflix, which increased its paying customers by around 4.4 million to a total of just under 214 million in the most recent quarter. Netflix benefited in particular from the successful South Korean series “Squid Game”.
Various worries
In the three months to the beginning of October, the revenues of the entire Disney group grew by 26 percent to 18.5 billion dollars, compared to the previous year, which was heavily burdened by the pandemic. At that time, the closure of the amusement parks and affiliated hotels as part of the pandemic containment measures had an impact on Walt Disney’s balance sheet.
The bottom line is that the Californian group achieved a profit of 160 million dollars in the past quarter. A year ago, Disney reported a net loss of more than $ 700 million.
Disney admitted that the business continued to suffer from the aftermath of the pandemic. Production delays and fewer premieres further limited the availability of film content. Meanwhile, lower advertising income and lower customer interest are burdening the classic cable TV division. These include the sports broadcaster ESPN, which is very important for the group but has been problematic for a long time.
Share collapses
Disney shares came under significant pressure in after-hours trading, slumping almost five percent to $ 166.50. It has thus moved significantly away from the high of the past twelve months. In March, the paper briefly hit the $ 203 mark.