DIS Shareholders and Stock Info ONLY

[CarolynFH]

https://deadline.com/2024/06/inside-out-2-international-worldwide-box-office-1235985850/

Inside Out 2’ Tops $863M Global As Sequel Overtakes Original Film’s Full Run
By Nancy Tartaglione - International Box Office Editor/Senior Contributor
June 28, 2024 - 9:58am PDT

Sounds great, but how much have ticket prices increased in the interim? I wish the report was on number of tickets sold. That would also compensate for regional differences in ticket prices.

 

[HokieRaven5]

Sounds great, but how much have ticket prices increased in the interim? I wish the report was on number of tickets sold. That would also compensate for regional differences in ticket prices.

Internationally haven’t found where that is tracked, but as far as domestic the sequel as of June 28 was sitting about 2.6M less tickets sold than the original. Still time for it to surpass that.

 

[CarolynFH]

Internationally haven’t found where that is tracked, but as far as domestic the sequel as of June 28 was sitting about 2.6M less tickets sold than the original. Still time for it to surpass that.

Thanks for taking the time to research the data! I had no idea it was tracked anywhere!

 

[wabbott]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/n...-out-2-box-office-trample-horizon-1235935570/

Box Office: ‘Quiet Place’ Prequel and ‘Inside Out 2’ Duke It Out for No. 1, ‘Horizon’ Left in the Dust

The June box office is ending on a high note as 'A Quiet Place: Day One' becomes the latest film to overperform. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Kevin Costner's big-budget 'Horizon: An American Saga.'

June 29, 2024 - 8:11am PDT
by Pamela McClintock

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/hollywood-stocks-review-h1-2024-1235919886/

Many Hollywood Stocks Are Now “Show Me” Bets for Wall Street Investors

Disney and Fox Corp. gained, while peers largely posted share declines over the first six months of 2024. Investors are on edge and wanting more evidence a decline in media businesses can be reversed.

By Georg Szalai, Etan Vlessing
June 27, 2024 - 1:23pm PDT

 

[mdmost]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1807456015434076484

 

[irlandaise]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1807456015434076484

Box Office Mojo hasn't caught up yet so he's probably going by these numbers:

https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Inside-Out-2-(2024)

Outstanding performance!

 

[HokieRaven5]

Thanks for taking the time to research the data! I had no idea it was tracked anywhere!

After this weekend it has passed ticket sales of the original domestically.

 

[wabbott]

https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/...imely-cruise-expansion-dbd35e08?siteid=yhoof2

The Mouse House Sets Sail With Timely Cruise Expansion
New vessels will double Disney’s cruise business just as theme parks face challenges

By Dan Gallagher
July 1, 2024

New cruise ships don’t exactly go up overnight. That makes Disney’s timing all the more fortuitous.

Walt Disney Co. has been in the cruise business for nearly 30 years, but it has long been a drop in the industry’s ocean: The five ships it operates have a combined passenger capacity of about 5% of market leader Carnival. But three more ships are coming online over the next 18 months, including a 208,000 gross ton behemoth called Disney Adventure that will be the Magic Kingdom’s first entry into the flotilla of megaships that have been hitting the seas lately. The three new vessels will more than double Disney’s cruise capacity by the end of next year, Bernstein analyst Laurent Yoon estimates.

The timing couldn’t be better: Disney’s land-based theme parks have hit a bit of a rough patch. Revenue growth has slowed notably following a strong two-year run fueled by pent-up demand after the pandemic’s lockdowns. The company warned in its fiscal second quarter report in early May that operating profit for the Experiences segment that includes parks and cruise ships would fall well short of Wall Street’s forecasts for the June-ending quarter. Disney cited “some normalization of post-Covid demand” as a factor, which was enough to sink the stock: Disney shares are down around 15% since that report. Rival theme-park operators United Parks, Six Flags and Cedar Fair have averaged a 25% gain since their respective reports.

Theme parks play a particularly important role in Disney’s business model these days. Streaming has decimated the cable-TV industry, while the pandemic and last year’s crippling Hollywood strikes have kept box-office sales well below their levels from five years ago. Domestic and international parks—which include the cruise business—accounted for one-third of Disney’s revenue but 52% of its operating profit for the 12-month period ended March. Their bottom-line contribution averaged just 29% in the three fiscal years before the pandemic.

Hence, the outlook for theme parks has become the biggest area of concern for Disney’s investors lately. For its part, the company has painted the problem as temporary. Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston said on the last earnings call that operating-income growth in the Experiences segment is expected to “rebound significantly” in the September quarter.

But some analysts aren’t so sure. In a June 10 report, Brandon Nispel of KeyBanc Capital predicted that the company’s domestic park business “will be pressured for the rest of 2024,” in part as attendance normalizes following anniversary celebrations at the Florida and California parks over the prior few years. There is also the threat posed by Comcast’s Universal, which is opening a major park in Orlando next year called Epic Universe. MoffettNathanson analysts expect that facility to cost Disney World about one million visitors over the next two years.

An expanded cruise-ship business should help Disney offset that. Business is still booming for the industry as the three largest cruise operators—Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings—all exceeded expectations for the “wave season,” the period between the holidays and March when many cruises are booked. Carnival reported a surprise net profit for its fiscal second quarter last week and raised its full-year projection, with Chief Executive Josh Weinstein citing an “unprecedented level of demand for 2025 sailings” in the company’s earnings call.

For Disney, cruise ships have also turned out to be a natural fit for a company skilled at getting entire families to fly across the country, spend gobs of money and spend hours waiting in sweltering heat. And those families apparently don’t age out. “A number of people who go on our cruises are without kids because their connection to the brand and the [intellectual property] is extraordinary,” Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger said at MoffettNathanson’s investment conference in May.

Disney doesn’t disclose financial details of the cruise business, but it told analysts last year that the yield on its floating theme parks—meaning the amount of revenue per passenger per cruise day—is twice the industry average. UBS analyst John Hodulik said in a June 27 report that “rapid expansion of cruise capacity helps de-risk the medium term outlook” for Disney’s Park business.

Yoon of Bernstein estimates the three new ships will bring Disney’s cruise revenue to more than $5.1 billion in fiscal 2026 compared with the approximately $2.5 billion he projects for the business in the current fiscal year ending in September. “We expect the additional Cruise revenue to more than offset the Epic revenue impact,” Yoon wrote in a June 17 note to clients.

New competition on land won’t sink the Mouse House after all.

Write to Dan Gallagher at dan.gallagher@wsj.com

 

[CarolynFH]

And those families apparently don’t age out.

Our first DCL cruise was on the Magic in 1998, with our kids. Our second was on the Magic in 2024, just the two of us, and we just booked another for 2026. As we age, the parks hold less appeal for us, and we prefer DCL to RCI and others because there’s no smoky casino to traverse or work around to get to the dining room.

 

[Duckbug.Ducktales]

I'm kind of struck by this line about EU

MoffettNathanson analysts expect that facility to cost Disney World about one million visitors over the next two years.

Is it seriously that little? I would think the impact would be bigger in the first two years and then kind of level out...
Anyway, happy DCL is doing well as we've been enjoying getting our Disney fix in a more relaxed setting that way the past couple of years, meanwhile seeing cool new places. Currently have cruises booked for 2025 and 2026

 

[wabbott]

I'm kind of struck by this line about EU

Is it seriously that little? I would think the impact would be bigger in the first two years and then kind of level out...
Anyway, happy DCL is doing well as we've been enjoying getting our Disney fix in a more relaxed setting that way the past couple of years, meanwhile seeing cool new places. Currently have cruises booked for 2025 and 2026

TV weathermen & finacial anaysts are two vocations that can be consistently wrong and keep their jobs.

 

[wabbott]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/b...-owner-cedar-fair-complete-merger-1235931847/

Six Flags and Knott’s Berry Farm Owner Cedar Fair Complete Merger, Creating Theme Park Behemoth

The $8 billion deal was announced last year, and will see the two theme park companies merge operations.

by Alex Weprin
July 1, 2024 - 1:12pm PDT

 

[wabbott]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/01/business/dealbook/barry-diller-paramount.html

Barry Diller Explores Bid to Take Control of Paramount

Mr. Diller, a digital media pioneer, lost a bidding war for Paramount Pictures decades ago. Now, he’s making a run at its parent company.
By Lauren Hirsch and Benjamin Mullin
July 1, 2024, 6:31 p.m. EDT

The billionaire Barry Diller is exploring a bid to take control of Paramount, the parent company of CBS, MTV and Nickelodeon, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

Mr. Diller’s digital-media conglomerate, IAC, has signed nondisclosure agreements with National Amusements, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, the people said. Nondisclosure agreements are a key step in deal making, allowing both sides to exchange confidential information.

Mr. Diller’s interest in Paramount is the latest twist in one of the most complex — and dramatic — efforts to sell a media company in several years. Paramount reached the brink of a deal in recent months with Skydance, a Hollywood studio, before talks abruptly fell apart.

The nondisclosure agreements were signed sometime after the possible deal between Paramount and Skydance fell through in June, two of the people said.

It’s unclear how far along the talks between IAC and National Amusements are. Others have also expressed interest in acquiring National Amusements, including the media and finance executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Steven Paul, the Hollywood executive best known for his work on the “Baby Geniuses” franchise.

A bid to take control of Paramount would be a coda of sorts for Mr. Diller, 82, who tried to acquire Paramount Pictures in the early ’90s. He was outbid by Sumner Redstone, the bellicose media mogul whose daughter, Shari, now controls the company.

Mr. Diller was named head of Paramount Pictures in 1974 at the age of 32. He was credited with rejuvenating the studio, developing a cadre of talented lieutenants, like the future Disney chief executive Michael Eisner and the studio wunderkind Jeffrey Katzenberg, that became known as the Killer Dillers.

After Mr. Redstone outbid him for the company, Mr. Diller set his sights on continuing to build his new media empire, striking a series of audacious deals to expand IAC.

“They won,” Mr. Diller said in a statement after losing out to Mr. Redstone. “We lost. Next.”

National Amusements began exploring potential deals last year. As part of its talks with Skydance, Shari Redstone, the largest shareholder at National Amusements, would sell the company to Skydance, while Paramount would merge with Skydance through a separate transaction. That deal was scuttled after they could not agree on noneconomic terms after significant shareholder pushback.

By acquiring National Amusements, a buyer would get control of Paramount — and its valuable studio library — without having to strike a deal to acquire the company outright. But it would also mean taking control of an asset with significant liabilities, including roughly $14 billion in debt and cable businesses facing significant headwinds.

Lauren Hirsch joined The Times from CNBC in 2020, covering deals and the biggest stories on Wall Street. More about Lauren Hirsch

Benjamin Mullin reports on the major companies behind news and entertainment.

 

[Elijah Abrams]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/01/business/dealbook/barry-diller-paramount.html

Barry Diller Explores Bid to Take Control of Paramount

Mr. Diller, a digital media pioneer, lost a bidding war for Paramount Pictures decades ago. Now, he’s making a run at its parent company.
By Lauren Hirsch and Benjamin Mullin
July 1, 2024, 6:31 p.m. EDT

The billionaire Barry Diller is exploring a bid to take control of Paramount, the parent company of CBS, MTV and Nickelodeon, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

Mr. Diller’s digital-media conglomerate, IAC, has signed nondisclosure agreements with National Amusements, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, the people said. Nondisclosure agreements are a key step in deal making, allowing both sides to exchange confidential information.

Mr. Diller’s interest in Paramount is the latest twist in one of the most complex — and dramatic — efforts to sell a media company in several years. Paramount reached the brink of a deal in recent months with Skydance, a Hollywood studio, before talks abruptly fell apart.

The nondisclosure agreements were signed sometime after the possible deal between Paramount and Skydance fell through in June, two of the people said.

It’s unclear how far along the talks between IAC and National Amusements are. Others have also expressed interest in acquiring National Amusements, including the media and finance executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Steven Paul, the Hollywood executive best known for his work on the “Baby Geniuses” franchise.

A bid to take control of Paramount would be a coda of sorts for Mr. Diller, 82, who tried to acquire Paramount Pictures in the early ’90s. He was outbid by Sumner Redstone, the bellicose media mogul whose daughter, Shari, now controls the company.

Mr. Diller was named head of Paramount Pictures in 1974 at the age of 32. He was credited with rejuvenating the studio, developing a cadre of talented lieutenants, like the future Disney chief executive Michael Eisner and the studio wunderkind Jeffrey Katzenberg, that became known as the Killer Dillers.

After Mr. Redstone outbid him for the company, Mr. Diller set his sights on continuing to build his new media empire, striking a series of audacious deals to expand IAC.

“They won,” Mr. Diller said in a statement after losing out to Mr. Redstone. “We lost. Next.”

National Amusements began exploring potential deals last year. As part of its talks with Skydance, Shari Redstone, the largest shareholder at National Amusements, would sell the company to Skydance, while Paramount would merge with Skydance through a separate transaction. That deal was scuttled after they could not agree on noneconomic terms after significant shareholder pushback.

By acquiring National Amusements, a buyer would get control of Paramount — and its valuable studio library — without having to strike a deal to acquire the company outright. But it would also mean taking control of an asset with significant liabilities, including roughly $14 billion in debt and cable businesses facing significant headwinds.

Lauren Hirsch joined The Times from CNBC in 2020, covering deals and the biggest stories on Wall Street. More about Lauren Hirsch

Benjamin Mullin reports on the major companies behind news and entertainment.

Funny thing I thought of: Will this prompt Michael Eisner and/or Jeffrey Katzenberg to make bids for NAI?

 

[wabbott]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/01/paramount-streaming-merger-talks.html

Paramount is hunting for a streaming partner, could kick off a wave of deals

Published Mon, Jul 1 2024- 3:03 PM EDT
Alex Sherman@sherman4949

Key Points

• Paramount Global leaders are having discussions with a number of companies to explore merging Paramount+, its money-losing streaming service.
• Warner Bros. Discovery has interest in merging Max and Paramount+ as a joint venture, according to people familiar with the matter.
• Media companies are considering new ways to better monetize streaming content after billions of dollars in losses over the last several years.

 

[RivShore]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/01/paramount-streaming-merger-talks.html

Paramount is hunting for a streaming partner, could kick off a wave of deals

Published Mon, Jul 1 2024- 3:03 PM EDT
Alex Sherman@sherman4949

Key Points

• Paramount Global leaders are having discussions with a number of companies to explore merging Paramount+, its money-losing streaming service.
• Warner Bros. Discovery has interest in merging Max and Paramount+ as a joint venture, according to people familiar with the matter.
• Media companies are considering new ways to better monetize streaming content after billions of dollars in losses over the last several years.

Was just about to post this - I wonder if this is the news that drove the stock down the last few trading sessions? This could hurt Disney financials however it goes - (1) Disney acquires P+ and the acquirer's stock takes a hit and margins are diluted for some time (long term, maybe it's good, though) or (2) A competitor acquires P+ and now D+ has a new, more formidable competitor (bad in the short and long term). Seems like a bit of a no win situation that drove the stock down when the news hit late last week.

 

[mdmost]

Consolidation of streaming services feels like the natural progression. Netflix, Max, Disney+, Apple+. Max is the most venerable given WB's position. Paramount+ hasn't caught on at all which makes it a prime takeover target. Of the streaming services, it has the least amount of value.

 

[irlandaise]

Consolidation of streaming services feels like the natural progression. Netflix, Max, Disney+, Apple+. Max is the most venerable given WB's position. Paramount+ hasn't caught on at all which makes it a prime takeover target. Of the streaming services, it has the least amount of value.

BTW, did you folks see the news the other day about Paramount removing a lot of content from their cable channels' websites so that people now have to subscribe to Paramount+ to see it?

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/b...ebsite-daily-show-clips-wiped-out-1235933345/

Some older content isn't even available on P+.

 

[wabbott]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/over-3-decades-later-barry-130000301.html

Over 3 Decades Later, Barry Diller Takes Another Swing at Paramount | Analysis
by Alexei Barrionuevo - The Wrap
Tue, Jul 2, 2024, 9:00 AM EDT

 

[Brian Noble]

"We are no longer going to give you our catalog for free" does not seem to be entirely unreasonable.