News Josh D’Amaro Named Next CEO of The Walt Disney Company

[Disgruntled Walt]

A post from Iger:

A morning at Disneyland with Josh D'Amaro, the new CEO of The Walt Disney Company. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Josh’s appointment!

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"Josh, is that a magic band in your pocket or are your pants too tight?"

 

[JoeCamel]

A post from Iger:

A morning at Disneyland with Josh D'Amaro, the new CEO of The Walt Disney Company. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Josh’s appointment!

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Bob trying to look tall while Josh scrunches down a bit......

 

[HauntedPirate]

A good third of that disappears by maintaining the products they have. Drydocks, hotel refurbs, painting Main Street, bus fleet replacements etc. at least based on how they “60B” is “allocated”.

So it’s really only 20B (at best) of things we’d account for. Or 8B you are missing.

Bigger line items I think you’ve missed;

-Riviera/Skyliner/Hollywood Studios writ large including MMRR construction and TSPL.
-Your Galaxies Edge estimates are probably a little low
-They wasted money on that Star Wars Hotel
-Avengers Campus
-A bulk of Epcot spending occurred last decade
-Money was spent on Paris, even with their partial ownership most of the decade
-Entertainment
-Animal Kingdom and was a lot more than just Pandora
-Almost every WDW park had some grand guest flow related overhaul. MK Hub, DHS/DAK ticketing and parking.
-Internet Infrastructure modernization at WDW.
-Disney Springs was a bigger one
-A smaller smattering of DVC conversion.
-Hong Kong had two major project tranches, not one.

Edit— art of animation and Pixar pals garage are two more projects in the 100s of millions

third theatres, Disneyland 60th, FEA, a Smaller portion of Tron all probably cost small change.

Epcot spending, in 2019, no less? Skyliner? Internet infrastructure? You think GE was MORE than the $1billion reported by numerous trusted sources?

 

[BrianLo]

Epcot spending, in 2019, no less? Skyliner? Internet infrastructure? You think GE was MORE than the $1billion reported by numerous trusted sources?

I am not the companies accountant, why are you treating everything I say (constantly) so combatively?

You asked me to try and help you generate a project list from last decade of where the money went, I am not endorsing it.

Yes, Epcot was already under construction in 2019. Yes, Skyliner opened in 2019, what is the concern? What you want to attribute towards those two is up to you, I frankly don’t care.

I apologize if I’m misremembering, but I thought @lazyboy97o said Galaxies edge overran?

 

[flyerjab]

I am not the companies accountant, why are you treating everything I say (constantly) so combatively?

You asked me to try and help you generate a project list from last decade of where the money went, I am not endorsing it.

Yes, Epcot was already under construction in 2019. Yes, Skyliner opened in 2019, what is the concern? What you want to attribute towards those two is up to you, I frankly don’t care.

I apologize if I’m misremembering, but I thought @lazyboy97o said Galaxies edge overran?

It stinks when certain posters on this board feel the need to act the way they do just because you may not see things the same way that they do with regard to the current and future state of the company. But here we are.

You on the other hand, are one of the most courteous and welcoming posters on the forums. Definitely glad you post your thoughts here.

 

[Disney Irish]

Oh really?

So Telsa ran those power lines down tens of thousands of miles of highways and established the system of conventional gas stations for traditional fossil fuel vehicles that they contracted to be the location of many of their charging stations?

Please tell me more.

So you’re telling me that Tesla didn’t spend over $1B on the initial charging network, and didn’t announce another $500M expansion of that network in 2024? That someone else paid for it? Come on man.

Not all of those chargers are in gas stations, they are all over the place and those aren’t free to lease the land or build. So they may not have built the power grid they are connected to but neither did Ford build out the gas stations or the roads. Heck Ford didn’t even invent the car, they credited with inventing the mass production method for producing cars, that’s it. So this whole analogy gotcha that you’re trying to do is flawed in itself.

If you want to go one step further back to the original point of this conversation, Netflix isn’t even the first streaming service, YouTube came 2 years prior and so were several others. People had been downloading movies and streaming content since the mid-90s, RealNetworks was actually the first. Netflix just made it easier to get all those movies in one place and played directly from the service. So this idea that Netflix was the “first” is also flawed. They are credited with making it popular and more accessible, that’s it.

So again it’s not unfair to compare Netflix’s growth history with Disney’s DTC current growth history. Ramping up any new business venture is not without costs, no matter who came before them. Disney might have had a larger internal content library, but that is not free either, there is still cost associated with it, and in many ways more expensive than just licensing it like Netflix. So the fact they are moving into double digit margins in less than 10 years is short of amazing when most businesses don’t do that.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

A good third of that disappears by maintaining the products they have. Drydocks, hotel refurbs, painting Main Street, bus fleet replacements etc. at least based on how they “60B” is “allocated”.

So it’s really only 20B (at best) of things we’d account for. Or 8B you are missing.

Bigger line items I think you’ve missed;

-Riviera/Skyliner/Hollywood Studios writ large including MMRR construction and TSPL.
-Your Galaxies Edge estimates are probably a little low
-They wasted money on that Star Wars Hotel
-Avengers Campus
-A bulk of Epcot spending occurred last decade
-Money was spent on Paris, even with their partial ownership most of the decade
-Entertainment
-Animal Kingdom and was a lot more than just Pandora
-Almost every WDW park had some grand guest flow related overhaul. MK Hub, DHS/DAK ticketing and parking.
-Internet Infrastructure modernization at WDW.
-Disney Springs was a bigger one
-A smaller smattering of DVC conversion.
-Hong Kong had two major project tranches, not one.

Edit— art of animation and Pixar pals garage are two more projects in the 100s of millions

third theatres, Disneyland 60th, FEA, a Smaller portion of Tron all probably cost small change.

Maintenance is not “investment”…it’s overhead.

Don’t be marks, people…I’ve already watched over 20 years of this “experience” nonsense…set standards and hold them. They aren’t in it for you. Do better

 

[Disney Irish]

Tesla is an interesting mention because they're moving away from building cars now. Not that they're stopping entirely, but they're cutting back and focusing on other things.

You can blame that on the erratic behavior and ego of their current CEO (not to mention his massive paycheck), the more vocal and animated he got the more their cars sales go down. Add to that the fact they are no longer unique or even innovative, ie they lost their edge, and it leads to having to move into other areas or go under.

 

[Disney Irish]

That's the problem. For the audience they are more and more chasing, it is NOT a premiere vacation destination.

Why would it be?

Again it depends on who you ask, because again $10B in revenue seems to indicate that many still feel Disney is a premiere experience.

Also some of you all seem to think that they aren't now investing again to try and build up that product, when we know they are. Yes maybe they should have been doing it all along but they are now and that should count for something. So why not put a pin in this and come back in 5 years and see where things are, and see if you all have the same feeling of it not being "premiere".

All those people you see standing sweaty in lines at the parks 10 months out of the year? That's the "riffraff" you speak of. I'm still trying to figure out how anyone here thinks WDW continues to exist at its current scale if those people* go away.

*which I'd wager many of us would find ourselves a part of, to be clear.

So Disney is pricing out all 8B people on the planet? Because last I check pretty much all people when standing in line get sweaty at some point, so yeah that isn't the "riffraff" I'm talking about and I think you know it.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

It stinks when certain posters on this board feel the need to act the way they do just because you may not see things the same way that they do with regard to the current and future state of the company. But here we are.

You on the other hand, are one of the most courteous and welcoming posters on the forums. Definitely glad you post your thoughts here.

The pens are pretty solid this year…just sayin

 

[flyerjab]

The pens are pretty solid this year…just sayin

Kicking me while my Fly boys are down!!

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Kicking me while my Fly boys are down!!

The big 5-0 anniversary this year, brother

(Blame gritty)

 

[UNCgolf]

You can blame that on the erratic behavior and ego of their current CEO (not to mention his massive paycheck), the more vocal and animated he got the more their cars sales go down. Add to that the fact they are no longer unique or even innovative, ie they lost their edge, and it leads to having to move into other areas or go under.

It'll be interesting to see if Xiaomi is allowed to enter the US market. They're apparently light years beyond any electric cars currently available in the US in overall quality, including anything Tesla has put out.

They're supposedly in talks with Ford right now about a joint venture to start manufacturing in the US.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

It'll be interesting to see if Xiaomi is allowed to enter the US market. They're apparently light years beyond any electric cars currently available in the US in overall quality, including anything Tesla has put out.

They're supposedly in talks with Ford right now about a joint venture to start manufacturing in the US.

They’ll get blocked by the carbon sludge lobby

 

[Andrew C]

Did we go back to 2019? I remember when electric cars were all the rage.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Did we go back to 2019? I remember when electric cars were all the rage.

They’re still expected to surpass ICE sales by the early 2030’s…and a large chunk of “traditional models” sales include HEVs…which only use the guzzler engine 30-40% of the time.

That’s like 3/4 of Toyotas…which are the biggest sellers in the US

 

[flynnibus]

So did Netflix have out of control spending and have a terrible organizational structure when they had below 10% margins for half its existence?

You cannot expect above 20% margins immediately, it takes time to build things up and that costs money. So that isn't an excuse, that is reality. Margins will improve, they have and as @BrianLo mentioned its expected to be above 10% in the upcoming quarter, and will continue to improve every quarter beyond that.

Netflix had technology hurdles to evolve through - the industry sorted that out before d+ was on the scene. D+ has a late comer advantage.

Netflix also had to pay to license all their content on the market. D+ didn’t have to.

D+ had tge financial ability to self fund everything even through all the negative cash flow periods.

D+ has the advantage of an existing corp behind it it could time share with verse float itself.

D+ very much should have a margin advantage as a late comer and the backing of an existing business. It also didn’t have to start a studio from acratch and also has both other input and distribution schemes for it’s content.

D+’s journey is nothing like netflix’s

 

[flynnibus]

Funny how that works, they road on the backs of others that came before it but still had to build up to become where they are now, just like Disney.

This is yet another horrible take and attempt at analogous.

Telsa had to spend to build a whole new vertical integration of EV technology and whole new spaces like driving aides. What did D+ have to invent from scratch and build to economic viability (tesla va ford) ? D+ are just a inhouse streaming platform… not some new disruptor technology.

 

[Disney Irish]

Netflix had technology hurdles to evolve through - the industry sorted that out before d+ was on the scene. D+ has a late comer advantage.

Netflix also had to pay to license all their content on the market. D+ didn’t have to.

D+ had tge financial ability to self fund everything even through all the negative cash flow periods.

D+ has the advantage of an existing corp behind it it could time share with verse float itself.

D+ very much should have a margin advantage as a late comer and the backing of an existing business. It also didn’t have to start a studio from acratch and also has both other input and distribution schemes for it’s content.

D+’s journey is nothing like netflix’s

Disney didn't have the technological infrastructure in-house when they started either, so they had to overcome similar technological hurdles as well.

I like how some of you are making it seem like Disney just had all this stuff readily available to them to just plop up a streaming service overnight just because Netflix existed first. It took several years of building out capacity and acquisition of BAMTech in 2017 before they released Disney+ in 2019. This wasn't an overnight thing that Disney just plop out of nowhere, it took time and investment to ramp up. Yes they may have been self funded, just like any existing company who use debt to finance new ventures.

Netflix was also an established company that was already public before they even went into streaming, so they too also self financed through its existing business. They also weren't in the content creation business until later.

Disney also has to pay for their content, its not "free", they have to pay all involved through residuals and profit sharing (remember that strike a couple years ago where SAG was fighting for more of the pie), so its more expensive actually than just licensing (remember all those saying in the early days of D+ that Disney should just license out their content instead and make more money).

 

[Disney Irish]

This is yet another horrible take and attempt at analogous.

Telsa had to spend to build a whole new vertical integration of EV technology and whole new spaces like driving aides. What did D+ have to invent from scratch and build to economic viability (tesla va ford) ? D+ are just a inhouse streaming platform… not some new disruptor technology.

First of all I'm not a Tesla fan. Tesla didn't invent anything either, all of it existed before them. Companies were testing self driving features long before them, they just got to market first, but it was built on the back of others (DARPA even held competitions for the same features a decade before Tesla existed).

Just like streaming existed before Netflix too, ie they didn't invent it, it was built on the backs of others that came a decade before them.