Although Disney’s Pixar Studios just suffered the biggest flop in its 30-year history with Elio’s box office-bomb during its opening weekend, it was a rare misstep during what’s been a mostly solid resurgence under the leadership of legendary mogul Bob Iger.
It was nearly three years ago when Disney’s (DIS) board shocked the entertainment world by firing CEO Bob Chapek and bringing back Iger to the role he had left 11 months earlier.
Chapek was, in fact, Iger’s handpicked successor who began his tenure right when the Covid pandemic hit and Disney had to shut down all of its theme parks for four months.
At the time Chapek was ousted in November 2022, Disney’s stock was down 37% for the year, hitting a 52-week low shortly before the board made the change.
From the time Iger took over in 2005 until he left in 2020, Disney’s share price surged about 420%, compared to a 150% gain for the S&P 500.
The company’s stock is now up nearly 20% since Iger took back the reins.
Central to the turnaround has been its success in the streaming wars, which has become an especially important metric for Wall Street.
In Q4 of 2022, Disney+ reported an operating loss of $1.47 billion — up from a $630 million loss in the same quarter the year prior – spurring a shareholder lawsuit and also Chapek’s dismissal.
In its recent fiscal second quarter earnings, Disney reported that its streaming income has increased $289 million to $336 million over Q1, while adding 1.4 million new subscribers to Disney+ versus Q1 for a total of 126 million paying customers.
Overall, the company reported 180.7 million subscribers combined for Disney+ and Hulu, an increase of 2.5 million over Q1.
Disney’s advertising unit also recently announced that it was partnering with Amazon Ads to integrate Disney’s Real-Time Ad Exchange (DRAX) with Amazon DSP – the company’s omnichannel marketing demand-side platform.
The collaboration will give advertisers direct access to Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu, allowing them to create targeted campaigns for subscribers.
"Disney has been on a decades-long journey to unlock data and insights that reflect how our audiences watch and engage with our content,” Matt Barnes, VP of programmatic sales at Disney Advertising, said in a statement.
“That knowledge has helped us move the needle for our clients and deliver better results–and this integration raises the bar for the wider industry.”
Iger’s decision to launch cheaper subscription tiers that include advertising fhas been credited with ramping up the subscriber base for its streaming services.
“Adding the advertising tier has brought in more customers than it cannibalized customers from the full-paid tier,” Michael Smith, a professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, said.
Disney+ now has the third-most subscribers for streaming platforms, trailing only Netflix and Amazon Prime.
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