Premier entertainment company The Walt Disney Company (DIS – Analyst Report) reported fiscal Q1 earnings results after the closing bell Tuesday, and easily topped expectations on the top and bottom lines. The release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens — already the most successful feature film in U.S. box office history — had a lot to do with this big positive surprise; Disney's Studio business was up 46 percent year over year.
Disney produced earnings of $1.63 per share on revenues of $15.24 billion — “a galaxy far, far away” from Zacks consensus estimates of $1.44 per share on $14.93 billion in sales. Disney does not typically give revenue or earnings guidance for the coming quarter during its earnings reports; the Zacks consensus for Disney's fiscal Q2 (March) is for $13.31 billion.
Operating income of $1 billion was quite exceptional, considering one of the major concerns among analysts was that ESPN's costs were getting too rich, especially in light of subscriber losses from consumers “cutting the cord” from cable entertainment systems. This makes investors wary that Disney may be losing share to firms like Netflix (NFLX) and/or Amazon (AMZN). That said, Cable Networks for Disney were still up 9 percent in the quarter, though its growth has dwindled a bit over the past couple fiscal years.
All in all, however, Disney has now posted double-digit EPS growth for the past 10 quarters. It also posted at least its fifth straight positive earnings surprise on the bottom line, though Disney's Q1 actual is a bigger beat (13.2 percent) than the average of the previous 4 quarters (8.8 percent).
If Disney can find a way more successfully address its ESPN albatross — the network's college Bowl Championship Series games on New Year's Eve underperformed expectations — and continue to topple increasingly higher comps moving forward (Parks and Resorts outperformed expectations as well, based on price increases), Disney should see some stock price acceleration that the company hasn't seen for a while now. After hours, DIS shares are actually down 2.5 percent at this time, and -10 percent year over year.
