Disneyland in Anaheim has been shuttered for months. The world is in the midst of a pandemic, and yet Disney stock jumped more than 13% on Friday to hit an all-time high price of $175.89, which pushed the company’s market cap north of $318 billion.
Why and how, you might be wondering. Credit Disney’s wildly successful streaming platform, which Wall Street seems to love as much as consumers. On Thursday, Disney announced 105 movies and TV series, of which 80% are set to be on the company’s direct-to-consumer streaming outlets.
Disney also announced that Disney+ has reached 87 million subscribers worldwide as of Dec. 2. Analysts loved that news, and they’ll be even more excited to learn that Disney projects 230 to 260 million subscribers for Disney+ by September of 2024.
“We believe Disney remains the best-positioned traditional media company to compete globally with the internet giants as video consumption moves online,” UBS Securities’ telecom and cable analyst John Hodulik wrote in a research note Friday.
The good news about the global domination of Disney content continued, as the company believes it will have 300 to 350 million subscribers in 2024, when you add Hulu, ESPN+, Star and other products to the mix.
Disney CFO Christine McCarthy told investors that the company will spend up to $9 billion on new content for Disney+ alone by 2024, which is also the point at which the company believes the streamer will be profitable. And if they hit their projected revenue goal of $35 billion by 2024 for Disney+, it will be their single largest business in the corporation.
As for Netflix, its stock dropped 1% on all this good news from Mickey Mouse’s corporate office.
Add comment