CHAPEK
BOB

Company plans Disney sees strong growth in Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ subscribers, expecting 325 million by 2024. The company is banking on international expansion of the Disney service and the Indian streaming service Star, as well as new releases of Marvel and Star Wars. Disney (DIS) held an "Investor Day" on Thursday, reporting gains in subscriber growth for its streaming services, which speaks to growing competition with established industry leader Netflix (NFLX). Shares in Disney, up 7% since the start of the year and 34% over the past six months, hit an all-time high in trading on Thursday. Disney reported 86.8 million subscribers to its Disney streaming service, launching on 12 November 2019. The figure indicates a jump in audience growth of 13.8 million, up from 73 million at the end of the fourth fiscal quarter ended 30 September. Bob Chapek said" "Disney has exceeded its wildest expectations". Also, he added that all content will end up on Disney sooner or later. As of last week, the number of subscribers to the Hulu service, aimed at adult audiences, had reached almost 39 million. Streaming sports content service ESPN+ also saw a jump in demand, tripling to more than 11 million subscribers in the past year as sports fans were restricted to offline formats due to the pandemic. The company said the current number of ESPN+ subscriptions is above the average forecast for 2024. Viewers watched 5 billion minutes of sports content last year. However, the company said it now expects to see 230 to 260 million Disney subscribers and 325 million viewers of all its streaming services together by 2024. Disney also said it plans to increase the cost of a Disney subscription by $1 to $7.99. For European subscribers, the plan will increase by €2. The company expects to peak losses in fiscal 2021 and reach profitability by fiscal 2024. Disney's planned investment in major brands is between $8bn and $9bn by 2024. On Thursday, Disney executives spent a lot of time on the prospects and role of the streaming service Star, an Indian brand that will be added to Disney to expand content. Star will be integrated into the Disney app from 23 February 2021.

Company plan In 2019, the well-known Disney+ service was introduced to everyone. The management of Walt Disney decided to reorganize its structure and focus on streaming and direct selling content to people. For this purpose, the company will establish a department for the distribution of media and entertainment content. The management of The Walt Disney Company has announced plans for a broad structural reorganisation of its entertainment and media departments, with the aim of developing its D2C strategy (production, promotion and sale of content directly to the consumer, without the involvement of intermediaries), as well as the streaming direction. The streaming server has recently shown very good results, it is also worth considering the company's plans to accelerate its D2C business, and Disney is strategically positioning itself to better support its growth strategy and increase shareholder value. The CEO Bob Chapek said: "The separation of content creation and distribution will allow us to be more efficient and faster in producing the product that our customers want in a way that is more convenient for them to receive". Media attention was drawn to the fact that Disney has decided to restructure its streaming services with a bias towards streaming services just one year after the launch of Disney+, where the number of subscribers has reached 60 million during this time. In order to achieve this goal, it is planned to establish a media and entertainment content distribution department, whose employees will deal with monetization and streaming issues. Karim Daniel was given the opportunity to lead the department. Daniel said: "I am very pleased that I was able to lead this new organisation at such an exciting moment in the company's history. And I am grateful to Chapek. It will be an amazing experience to work with such an incredible company. I hope that we will have a great success, by the way, which we have already achieved at D2C".

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