Disney continues to trade flat following an upbeat quarterly earnings report

Disney beat analysts’ estimates for earnings and revenue in its quarterly performance results on Tuesday. Despite the upbeat fiscal first-quarter earnings report, however, the American multinational mass media and entertainment company traded flat in the stock market later in the day.

According to Refinitiv, analysts were expecting the company to print $20.79 billion in revenue in the first quarter. In terms of earnings per share (EPS), experts were anticipating $1.44 for Disney. Tuesday’s report, however, noted a higher $20.86 billion in revenue in the recent quarter while the company claimed to have made $1.53 of earnings per share.

CEO Bob Iger Praises Disney+ Performance So Far

Tuesday’s earnings report marks the very first for Disney after the launch of Disney +. As a competitor of big names like Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime, etc., the new streaming service by Disney was launched in the U.S in November 2019. CEO Bob Iger commented on the earnings report and highlighted that Disney+ has so far exceeded the top ends of all expectations that the company had associated with it in terms of performance.

As of writing, Disney+ boasts 26.5 million subscribers in total. Following its launch on November 12^th, the total sign-ups for the service were recorded at 10 million. However, it is yet unknown if any of these subscribers, and how many if any, registered via the free trials that Disney is offering in association with various partners like Verizon.

Since there is always a possibility of subscribers who join the network via free trials to avoid subscribing again once the trial period is over, such subscribers don’t fall in the category of paid subscribers since the company is unable to recognize the revenue from such subscriptions.

Disney Gained Around 40% In The Stock Market In 2019

The average monthly revenue attributed to each of the Disney users, as per the company, is $5.56. Disney also announced that ESPN+ now has as many as 6.6 million subscribers while Hulu’s total subscribers were declared at 30.4 million.

Disney has traded flat on average in the stock market in 2020 so far. The stock opened the new year at around $148 in January. Currently trading at $146, it marks almost the same price for its shares as was noted at the start of the year. In 2019, however, Disney remained largely upbeat with an annual gain of around 40%. Disney traded at around $108 in January 2019 and was seen exchanging hands as high as around $152 per share towards the end of the year.