Today, The Walt Disney Company will reveal their earnings report for the first quarter of the 2014 Fiscal Year (Oct-Dec). Here are some things that I will be interested in finding out.
- What will the impact of Frozen be? The film has been a phenomenon and it will be interesting to see how the Studios benefited. It is also expect that Consumer Products will benefit from the Frozen effect. The studio will also benefit from the decent performance of Thor: The Dark World. A negative Frozen impact could be seen by the winter weather’s impact on Disney Parks.
- Where does MyMagic+ spending stand? Disney has committed to lower capital spending at the parks after an unprecedented level of investment. Most of the spending at the parks has been spent on the often-delayed MyMagic+ project. Expect analysts to question how much has been spent, when the rollout will be completed, and if the project has generated revenue. Disney fans will be interested as once this project’s costs go down, there will be more money for other projects.
- Has Disney Infinity made Disney Interactive profitable? We know that Infinity has sold more than 3 million units since launching last August. Yet there have been signs that the division is still struggling. John Pleasants left the company, leaving James Pitaro as sole President. The division made a profit last quarter, but the announced restructuring and layoffs hint that the division is not as profitable as Bob Iger desires.
- On the TV side, there will be a lot of questions on where advertising and subscription fees stand. Out of all of Disney’s businesses, television is changing the fastest with fragmenting and time-shifting changing the landscape. The bright side is that ABC is starting to collect subscriber fees from cable operators, which helps offset any loss in advertising.
- I bet analysts will want to know if ABC will get the NFL, Thursday Night Football rights. Live broadcasts have become incredibly valuable to broadcasters and ABC has suffered from having moved most of its sports programming to ESPN
Stay tuned to Laughingplace.com all day for the latest news on Earnings Day.