Disney CEO Bob Iger tells Cast Members that theme parks 'is a business where you spend to succeed'

Nov 28, 2023 in "The Walt Disney Company"

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Bob Iger

Posted: Tuesday November 28, 2023 3:00pm ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

Disney CEO Bob Iger hosted a Town Hall session with Cast Members today, discussing the company's recent achievements and future building opportunities.

Bob Iger

Despite not taking questions or making any new announcements, Iger continued reiterating recent messaging that Disney plans to invest heavily in the company's theme park segment.

Referring to the recently announced $60 billion investment in parks and resorts across the next ten years, Iger told Cast Members watching the virtual event that "this is a business where you spend to succeed." Iger has previously said that the investment would allow for expanding and enhancing domestic and international parks and cruise line capacity.

Speaking in April 2023 at the Walt Disney Company Annual shareholder meeting, Disney CEO Bob Iger said that Disney plans to spend $17 billion over the next ten years, specifically at Walt Disney World, bringing 13,000 new jobs to the area.

Interim CFO Kevin Lansberry told investors earlier this month to "expect those investments to ramp up towards the back half of that 10-year period with more gradual increases in the first few years."

Iger was joined at today's Town Hall by the four Disney segment Chairmen - Alan Bergman, Josh D'Amaro, Jimmy Pitaro, and Dana Walden.

Today's Town Hall session comes almost a year after Iger returned to the top job at Disney. When asked about the challenges facing him on his return, Iger said, "I knew that there were a myriad of challenges that I would face coming back. I won't say that it was easy, but I've never second-guessed the decision to come back, and being back still feels great."

In a previous memo to employees inviting them to the session, Iger said, "As I reflect on the immense progress we've made this year and look ahead to the many opportunities before us, I'm grateful to all of you - the people of this great company - for the tremendous work you do each and every day to ensure we continue delivering incredible entertainment for our audiences, guests, and fans all over the world."

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JoeCamel3 hours ago

He had to or lose it, he gets a tax bill for the difference as ordinary income so in his bracket ~40% maybe. Hope he can find some offsets somewhere

GhostHost10003 hours ago

Black Friday is coming up. Bob needed to go shopping I guess. $42.7mil. Wow

Brian3 hours ago

Looks like Bob just cashed in. https://blogmickey.com/2024/11/bob-iger-sells-42-million-worth-of-disney-stock/

Comped1 day ago

Most divestures from the Fox purchase were forced by the EU or other governments to allow the deal to go through in the first place (except for A&E Europe which was a bad move on the EU's part IMO, as it was a rather useless divestiture). I'm sure Disney would have rather kept the lot (at least for a while). Disney owning Sky likely would have had very interesting ramifications for ESPN stateside (PL rights would have been nearly certain), but would have put a good amount of strain on Disney's profit margin.

HauntedPirate1 day ago

Of course it is! Just ask Bob, he'll tell you so.

monothingie1 day ago

They raised the bid by $3.2B. That's a big difference from the $20B that Comcast drove up the price for Disney to purchase 21CF. You seem to gloss over the $20B premium paid on top of the original deal as it was insignificant. I'm not sure how you get $40B from divestitures when it seemed to only total $15B with the majority of that coming from the sale of the Fox RSNs. This is misleading. The "General Audience" (Adult) programing is what Hulu brought to table and D+ was never intended to go down that route. You keep going back to the timeline developed at launch that D+ would be profitable by 2024 but there is so much context missing from that assessment. 1. There was never consideration of relying on an ad supported model. 2. There was never consideration of complete HULU integration. 3. The expected profits were going to be many times what is being realized now or even being forecast. 4. There was no expectation that the losses would have been so large. (They were basically blowing up a fleet of DCL cruise ships a year at the height of their losses.) D+ main challenge is going to be user churn and loss of retail subscribers via the constant price increases. If Bob's hot mic comment about ad-tier subscribers is accurate, then they are apparently underperforming in this subscriber segment. The "success" of DTC for Disney has not come from putting out a good product with good content, but rather through acquisitions, price increases, password crackdowns, and introducing an ad-supported tier. Like the experiences segment which showed growth mostly through price increases, is that truly a sustainable path?

MisterPenguin1 day ago

Comcast did drive up the cost of Fox. But Disney returned the favor and bid up the cost of Sky, which Comcast bought. And now that Sky was overpriced, Disney sold their share of the overpriced Sky to Comcast. In the end, after buying Fox, Disney got $40M out of divestitures, drastically reducing the cost of Fox. Disney kept Fox out of competitors' hands. And transformed D+ content from "family" to "general audience" allowing them to set a new sub target after blowing through the first target in a manner of months. And Disney met their goal of when D+ would be profitable. In a competitive market, you're not going to have fantastical win after win. Even Netflix, the front runner, had a live-action streaming debacle. But that's not going to sink Netflix. And Disney isn't going to sink with several minor setbacks.

Brian1 day ago

Two years ago tonight, Iger was abruptly reinstated as CEO and Chapek was relegated to the Disney archives.

BrianLo2 days ago

There was immediate divestments of 30.5 billion dollars for the bigger ticket items. Many of them contingent and occurred with the purchase. Sky before. Hotstar most recently. I cannot find accessible numbers for True(X), Fox Next, TeleColombia, FoxSports Mexico, A&E Europe, Argentinian FoxSports. So in essence Disney is saddled with a 30-35B end price. Not 71. Hulu is worth 8.9 (at least). As for the other 20-25B, that’s the rub. FX, Searchlight, 20th century are the main keynotes. Along with their back catalogues and IP. They basically bought a general entertainment catalogue and production arm; which is not nothing. It’s actually a fairly strong general entertainment based arm. I’m not disagreeing that Bob was about to get an actual good deal and Roberts drove it up.

coffeefan2 days ago

Since we're about to enter a new era of M&A Disney should consider buying SquareEnix. It would be such a great fit.

BrianLo2 days ago

That’s what I’m referring to. Comcast bid Disney up 18B and then subsequently bought out Sky from them and paid at least 8.5B too much for it in the process. It’s kind of a wash for who overpaid more when they split the difference, but Roberts certainly doesn’t come off smart, with the better asset, nor laughing.

monothingie2 days ago

So that Bob could overpay by $20B. This was personal for Bob and he was not going to let Brian steal the largest deal of his career. Brian knew that and played Bob to over pay. Other than the 1/3 of Hulu from Fox can you let me know what they got that is currently profitable for them and justified the $71B spent?

Stripes2 days ago

Didn’t Comcast bid $65 billion? So you’re saying Comcast would have overpaid by $14 billion? I think, in the end, Disney has gotten their money’s worth out of 21CF. And due to the strength of those assets they are uniquely well positioned in the future.

Stripes2 days ago

ARPU went up by 2.66% for domestic Disney+ in FY24. Rupert got a lot more Disney stock and became Disney’s 2nd largest shareholder which could very well come in handy over the next 4 years.