Walt Disney Q4 Earnings Miss Street View; Shares Down

Shares of Walt Disney Co. (DIS) slipped nearly 5% in extended trading on Wednesday after the entertainment and media conglomerate reported a fourth-quarter earnings that missed Wall Street estimates, as streaming growth slows down.

Burbank, California-based Disney reported a fourth-quarter profit of $159 million or $0.09 per share, compared with last year’s loss of $710 million or $0.39 per share.

Adjusted earnings for the quarter were $0.37 per share, compared to a loss of $0.20 per share last year. On average, 24 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters estimated an earnings of $0.44 per share.

Revenues for the quarter jumped 26% to $18.53 billion from last year’s $14.71 billion last year. Analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $16.26 billion.

CEO Bob Chapek said, “As we celebrate the two-year anniversary of Disney+, we’re extremely pleased with the success of our streaming business, with 179 million total subscriptions across our DTC portfolio at the end of fiscal 2021 and 60% subscriber growth year-over-year for Disney+.”

Disney Parks, Experiences and Products revenues nearly doubled to $5.45 billion from $2.73 billion last year.

Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution segment revenues gained 9% to $13.08 billion from $11.97 billion last year.

Direct-to-Consumer revenues, which includes Hulu, ESPN+ and Disney+ services, increased 38% to $4.56 billion. However, operating loss increased from $0.4 billion to $0.6 billion, due to higher losses at Disney+, and to a lesser extent, ESPN+, partially offset by improved results at Hulu.

Disney+ subscribers surged 60% to 118.1 million from 73.7 million last year, however, was below Street estimates of 125.4 million subscribers as of the fourth quarter end. Meanwhile, Hulu recorded 20% subscriber growth to 43.8 million subscribers and ESPN+ subscriber growth increased 66% to 17.1 million.

DIS closed Wednesday’s trading at $174.53, down $0.58 or 0.33%, on the NYSE. The stock further dropped $7.83 or 4.49% in the after-hours trading.

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