A year ago Disney made huge profits. But then the corona crisis hits, leaving deep marks on the US media company's balance sheet. The bottom line was that the red numbers remained in the past quarter. There is still a ray of hope.
The corona crisis brought another quarter to the red for Walt Disney. In the three months to the end of September, the bottom line was $ 710 million, as the US entertainment giant announced. In the previous year there was still $ 777 million in profit. Nevertheless, Disney is slowly recovering from the corona shock, which shut down large parts of the entertainment empire and resulted in an enormous loss of 4.7 billion dollars in the previous quarter.
CEO Bob Chapek once again highlighted the streaming business for the online video service Disney +, which was launched exactly a year ago and which already had almost 74 million users at the end of the quarter and thus exceeded expectations, as a great success. Otherwise, the business figures were well above the analysts' forecasts, which initially caused the share to rise sharply after the trading hours. Nevertheless, Disney remains badly hit overall, sales fell 23 percent year-on-year to $ 14.7 billion.
The business with amusement parks, holiday resorts and cruises, which is an important profit maker in normal times, remains under massive strain. Revenues fell 61 percent to $ 2.6 billion, and there was an operating loss of $ 1.1 billion. The streaming business with services such as Disney + or Hulu is booming during the pandemic, but is not yet profitable, with the result being negative at $ 580 million. Only the classic cable division and the film studios made profit, but that was not enough to push the group balance sheet into positive territory.
.