DIS

Disney drop in after-hours session after streaming subscriber number misses

Disney drop in after-hours session after streaming subscriber number misses

Disney (DIS) shares tumbled by 3.64% in after-hours trading after the company reported fiscal second quarter numbers that beat Wall Street estimates on earnings but missed projections on revenue and on subscribers to the company’s Disney+ streaming service. Adjusted earnings per share were 79 cents versus a projected 32 cents a share. (For the second quarter of 2020 the company reported earnings of $1.53 a share.) Revenue of $15.62 billion for the quarter was a bit shy of Wall Street projections of $15,85 billion. The big miss came in subscription growth for the company’s paid streaming service. Disney+ topped 100 million subscribers for the first time–just 16 months after the late 2019 launch of the service. (Competitor and streaming leading Netflix had 208 million global subscribers at the end of its most recently reported quarter.) The stock dropped on the news, however, since analysts had been looking for 110.3 million subscribers by the end of the quarter.

Disney drop in after-hours session after streaming subscriber number misses

Disney postpones release of Black Widow in movie theaters–what does that tell us about the post-vaccine economy?

A couple of weeks before Christmas, Disney (DIS) decided that the pandemic coast would be clear enough by May for it to send Black Widow, the next Marvel universe potential blockbuster–to movie theaters in May. Not so far, the company has now decided. With rates of infection rising again across the country, Disney has decided to push the theatrical release of Black Widow, starring Scarlett Johansson, to July.

Market sees fourth quarter GDP slowdown as good news

Market sees fourth quarter GDP slowdown as good news

U.S. GDP growth slowed in the fourth quarter, gaining just 1% from the third quarter. For the full year the U.S. economy contracted by 3.5%. That makes 2020 the first time that the economy has contracted for a full year since 2009 and the Great Recession. At the bottom of that recession that economy contracted by 2.5%. 2020 is also the worst year for economic growth since 1946 when the economy shrank by 11.6% as the country demobilized after World War II. Consumer spending slowed in all 15 categories tracked by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The sectors that had powered the recovery in the third quarter–restaurants and hotels, for instance–reversed. The growth in spending on cars and health car also slowed from the acceleration in the third quarter. So why is this good news as far as the stock market is concerned?