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gregors

Disney is laying off 7k workers...

>>> “While this is necessary to address the challenges we’re

>>> facing today, I do not make this decision lightly,” said

>>> CEO Bob Iger, "

From the same article

>>> ...the company released better than expected financial

>>> results for the fourth quarter of 2022. Disney revenue in

>>> the quarter rose 8% to $23.5 billion, edging past

>>> estimates of $23.4 billion

Truly they are facing major challenges /s

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/business/disney-earnings/inde...

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Revenue alone is a bad way to judge how a mature company is doing. Their net profit margin is under 1%.

And the best way to capitalize on high revenue is to cut costs--layoffs.

Their NI was $1.2 billion and cash flow was -$2 billion. YoY their cash balance went down by $8, while debt only went down by $5.

But to be fair if a company can continue to operate or even grow while laying off employees, were these employees necessary in the first place ? I mean, should profit be given to employees, or owners ? Should company sacrifice their profit buffer to give it to employees they dont need ? Do they have a social responsibility to employees ?

I m european so we see work in a way more controlled, mutualized way were companies are expected by the state to provide for the citizens, but the success of the american model is that they disagree with us and are way more liberal with all of it. Should they change to copy us ?

> But to be fair if a company can continue to operate or even grow while laying off employees, were these employees necessary in the first place ?

You can drive a car a long way even if you never change the oil, but eventually it catches up with you. You can't conclude that an employee wasn't necessary if the company doesn't crash and burn soon after he was laid off. The negative consequences may not be manifested until years later.

Well, for Disney, making up for some of that early pandemic park revenue is certainly a challenge. Nobody messes with Mickey Mouse’s money!

Disney has already raised prices at their parks twice this year though:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/disney-raises-ticket-pric...

You can almost picture the Executive team at Disney on one of their private yachts on an island somewhere being fed food and drinks cackling at each other about how they'll be able to convince people they "Had to" layoff workers.

It's part of a restructuring, and the cuts account for about 3% of their global workforce.

Disney is laying off people because their movies keep bombing in the theaters. All they do is remakes and spinoffs of the famous old IPs they devoured, but that gravy train is coming to a stop. After a while people get tired of watching more half-baked Star Wars and Marvel sequels of bootleg quality.

They're running out of franchises to milk, and making something new and original is not in their corporate culture.

I’m guessing you didn’t read the article because Avatar made in over 2 billion dollars, exceeding even their expectations, becoming the 6th highest grossing film of all time. Or maybe it bombed, beats me.

Avatar grossed roughly $3.8B worldwide Avatar 2 has grossed roughly $2B worldwide.

None of these figures matter a damn. Gross figures aren't profit. And you need to adjust for inflation. Avatar 2 doesn't even show up in the top 25 all time when you adjust for inflation.

If the prod cost for Ava2 is $250 as reported, and marketing is roughly the same, then you're down to $1.5B before all the theaters take their cut. It doesn't mean that Disney netted $1.5B.

How is "not even top 25 of all time" an argument. What kind of metric is that, why is that a requirement. A top 100 of all time would be a flop now?

The parent said Avatar (I'm assuming based on the gross $$ that he meant Avatar 2) was the 6th highest grossing.

The quality of Pixar has certainly suffered - the movies have a “sequel direct to DVD” feel vs the amazing blockbuster of ancient days.

But theater attendance is way down either way - and streaming make have cannibalized other revenue streams more than people think.

FWIW, Encanto (Disney Animation, 2021) and Turning Red (Pixar, 2022) were the most streamed movies on any platform for all of 2022 according to Nielsen. Moana (Disney Animation, 2016) was #4.

It's debatable whether these films feel like "sequel direct to DVD" or not, but I don't think it's debatable that audiences are watching them.

https://www.adweek.com/lostremote/nielsen-top-15-stranger-th...

Encanto was quite good, Turning Red was Disney quality, not Pixar (I feel).

The problem with streaming is that you can stream repeatedly (believe me I know that) without incurring anything additional to Disney but costs. In the "old days" going to see Encanto in theaters would have cost our family easily $80+ - now that's just the cost for Disney+. And we would have gone, but why bother when it's available to stream?

They also cannot milk for MORE than the streaming cost/yr. I've noticed a lot of Encanto merchandizing on the clearance aisle, but I don't really have a way to track that.

I would argue “ability to stream a 1+ year old movie repeatedly, on demand” is part of what makes keeping your subscription worthwhile.

I think Disney intentionally took a lot of family-oriented films and kept them out of theatres during covid (reminder Encanto released in 2021) to avoid the optics of creating super spreader events where children are at the forefront. In their conference call they mention going back to theatrical releases.

Once the accounts get to it, it will be shown to have lost money. (I'm referring how movie studios will get financially creative to portray popular movies "losing" money in order not to pay royalties to actors/writers"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

They brought some of the accountants from Hollywood to the bay area and now all equity not owned by the founders or investors mysteriously becomes worthless right before a liquidation event.

Disney has produced a bunch of duds this year, Avatar and a marvel movie or two were the only two shining stars in a otherwise drab sky. Lets look at Lightyear, a real bomb considering every other Toy Story movie has been a smashing success($220M made against a $200M budget). Or Strange World which did even worse($73M made against a $135-170M budget). Black Panther Wakanda looks like it had a good box office, but when compared against the first movie it did half the returns of its predecessor.

That's a funny one cause Lightyear was a really good movie. In some ways it was a much more mature sci-fi story than most of the big "sci fi" movie franchises.

strange world was really excellent. I never heard about it until it hit the streaming service, and then my kids watching nothing but that for like two weeks straight

FTA, Iger's goal is the "return [of] creativity to the center of the company."

That makes a good soundbite.

But Avatar doing well doesn't erase the fact that many of their movies and series aren't.

Isn't that the exception and not the norm with modern Disney?

Disney's film division made a huge profit last year. One of their films made over a billion in around 10 days, has passed the $2 billion in just over a month, and is still on track to earn another hundred million before it leaves theaters. (Disney demands, and gets, 100% of opening weekend revenues, and a declining share each week thereafter; the exact breakdown varies from chain to chain. For small/independent chains, Disney retains at least 50% of box office revenues for the first 8 weeks.)

Their parks and live experiences made a huge profit last year: $29 billion in revenue, and approximately $8 billion in operating profits.

Their tech-heavy streaming division was the part that lost money: over $4 billion for the year, almost entirely offsetting the gross revenue made by the the film division from theatrical releases.

Yep, that's right: the only part of Disney that lost money was the tech-focused part.

the comment you're replying to shows revenue up 8% for them. Is there any evidence of this claim? It seems like everyone is watching Andor, and they're fresh off the new Avatar movie, one of the highest grossing films ever? like i don't watch any of these movies, hate marvel and the new star wars, but you're just wrong?

Disney+ was also a financial disaster.

Their movies are making more than ever. Have you actually looked at the figures?

And how is Disney related to gitlab?!

I mean it as a response that I feel the macroeconomic environment for companies are amazing and not tough.

It's a similar example of a company justifying layoffs with "difficult macroeconomic conditions" which actually doing very well. (Well I don't know if Gitlab are doing well but there are plenty of more examples like Disney.)

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