The group’s net profit fell to $216 million in that quarter compared to $1.5 billion in the same period in 2023.
This gap is mainly due to a depreciation of assets, linked to Disney’s decision to merge its Indian television subsidiary with its competitor Viacom18, dependent on the Reliance conglomerate of India.
The Californian group only controls 36.8% of this new entity. This operation led it to incur a significant exceptional charge of 2,000 million dollars.
The streaming activities of the Burbank (California state) group were profitable for the first time this quarter, after several years of successive losses and colossal investments.
Reported on a per-share basis and excluding exceptional items, the market’s benchmark, net income was $1.21, above the $1.12 analysts had expected.
Based on these quarterly results, Disney expects annual growth of 25% in its earnings per share excluding exceptional items, compared to the 20% obtained so far.
Despite the fact that the result in the “streaming” activity leaned green for the first time since the launch of the Disney+ platform, in November 2019, Disney CEO Bob Iger warned that this segment would once again be in deficit during the current quarter, before returning to profitability in the subsequent three months.
