Disney+ subscriber growth
Disney reported quarterly earnings above market analysts' expectations, but its revenues came in below estimates. Disney's streaming business added fewer new users than Wall Street forecast, similar to Netflix's latest quarter.
Disney (DIS) shares, down 1.6% this year after a strong rise in 2020, fell 3.9% in non-trading hours after the company released its financial second-quarter report, which ended in March. The company's results were affected in different ways by the massive US vaccination campaign and the lifting of quarantine restrictions.
Disney posted a 32% quarter-on-quarter rise in earnings to $0.79 per share, $0.52 better than analysts' average estimate of $0.27.
Revenue was $15.61 billion, compared with Wall Street's estimate of $15.87 billion. That was 13% less than Disney made in the same quarter in 2020, but the rate of revenue decline has been declining for the past three consecutive quarters.
Disney's revenues
The media and streaming services division brought in 1% more than a year ago: $12.44bn. At the same time, the parks, entertainment and toy sales division posted a 44% drop in sales.
During the second quarter, the Disney streaming service added 8.7 million subscribers, bringing the total number of subscribers at the end of the quarter to 103.6 million, down from 94.9 million at 2 January.
Disney's Hulu service had a total of 41.6 million paid subscribers, including 3.8 million live streaming subscribers. And the number of paid subscriptions on ESPN+ increased by 75%. The addition of 8.7 million. Disney subscribers is more than Netflix adding 3.98 million new global subscribers in its first quarter of 2021.
However, Netflix outperforms Disney+ in another very important metric average revenue per user ARPU.
Disney's ARPU, excluding India's Hotstar, was $5.61 per month. Netflix's ARPU last quarter in the US and Canada was $14.25 per month, up 9% from a year ago.
Average revenue per user for Disney was $3.99 and $4.55 for ESPN while Hulu's live streaming and video-on-demand subscription package posted average revenue per user of $81.83.
