Disney stock slides on revenue and streaming misses
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- Disney posted its earnings for the first quarter on Tuesday.
- The entertainment giant beat Wall Street forecasts for the fourth consecutive quarter.
- Despite the seemingly strong report, its shares tumbled 5% ahead of the opening bell.
Disney stock tumbled ahead of the opening bell on Tuesday as investors reacted to an earnings report that had both positive and negative messages.
Shares were down 5% to about $110 shortly before 8 a.m. ET, even though the headline numbers matched Wall Street's expectations.
Disney's earnings per share of $1.21 for the three months to March 31 beat the $1.10 figure analysts had predicted, per data from Refinitiv, although its revenue of $22.08 billion fell just short of estimates.
The stock was up close to 30% this year at Monday's close, but a combination of the revenue miss and weaker-than-expected subscriber numbers for Disney's streaming business probably sparked the early-morning sell-off, according to analysts.
"With a decent rally coming into these results, nothing less than perfection was acceptable to the market, as [CEO Bob] Iger and co. found out on Tuesday," XTB research director Kathleen Brooks said.
Disney's content sales and licensing revenue fell 40% year-over-year, which it blamed on the lack of a box-office hit that could compete with "Avatar: The Way of Water" and "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," both of which boosted figures for the first quarter of 2023.
Disney expects its streaming business, Disney Plus, to turn a profit for the first time in the fourth quarter, but total subscriber numbers of 153.6 million fell short of analysts' expectations.
Streaming losses narrowed to just $18 million, down from $659 million this time last year. Profits climbed 12% in the parks division.
It's the fourth consecutive quarter that Disney has beaten earnings estimates, as Iger battles to show investors that his turnaround plan is working after a long proxy battle against activist investor Nelson Peltz.