Disney’s Q4 FY18 Earnings Results Webcast

[MickeyMinnieMom]

I'll edit the post - quarterly earnings for the parks & resorts segment by year. The 4 lines are the different quarters. The summer quarter where there was 'soft attendance' has been the slowest growing over the past 5 years.

Which makes sense as they deliberately reduce seasonality with pricing, etc. Not surprising to me.

 

[winstongator]

Which makes sense as they deliberately reduce seasonality with pricing, etc. Not surprising to me.

Having one quarter of the year seemingly lag tells me they aren't doing a good enough job of reducing seasonality. This info combined with the 'soft attendance' would lead me to believe that they will do something to bump summer attendance. It will have to be something that doesn't bleed into Galaxy's Edge opening. Will the sweet FL resident deals on 3 & 4 day tickets come back for a period?

 

[MickeyMinnieMom]

Having one quarter of the year seemingly lag tells me they aren't doing a good enough job of reducing seasonality. This info combined with the 'soft attendance' would lead me to believe that they will do something to bump summer attendance. It will have to be something that doesn't bleed into Galaxy's Edge opening. Will the sweet FL resident deals on 3 & 4 day tickets come back for a period?

I don’t get this logic at all.

 

[MickeyMinnieMom]

I wouldn't make a big deal of the 4% increase, as they said last year was depressed artificially by Irma.

They had storm impact this year as well, just less so, correct?

 

[winstongator]

I don’t get this logic at all.

They've brought up the Jan-Mar quarter, but the summer has lagged. Whether general travel patterns or things Disney has done has shifted the relative 'down time' quarter from Jan-Mar to Jul-Sept. The overall variation by quarter is roughly constant, except for being down a little in 2015 which was a big attendance year.

 

[MickeyMinnieMom]

Amazing how little traffic a thread like this gets since results are good... ah... the internet...

 

[winstongator]

I was curious as to how well the domestic attendance percent changes lined up with the TEA data (also what is on wikipedia). Disney reports fiscal years, while TEA is calendar years, so there's the initial error of not measuring the same thing. However, the percent changes in the TEA data track the annual report data closely. The biggest discrepancy is 2017, but that is likely due to TEA including 3 more months of Pandora driven attendance (Oct-Dec 2017), where Disney's fiscal year ended Sept 30.

 

[GoofGoof]

I think there’s a disconnect between what people around here have been talking about as “numbers” at WDW being down leading to cost cutting and the numbers reported in a 10Q. The SEC document is always comparing year over year numbers. Attendance is up 4% vs the same quarter last year. Most companies have their own guidance and forecasted numbers for the current year. It’s possible that the forecast was for attendance to be up 6% or 8% vs last year when the actuals came in 4%. So it’s possoble that the numbers were up vs last year as reported in the 10Q and still down vs internal forecast. In my experience most corporate bonus programs are based on actuals vs forecast. If the numbers were slipping vs forecast it makes sense that management would cut costs and belt tighten to try to get closer to targets and of course improve their own bonuses.

The other factor is we don’t have a breakdown of DLR vs WDW. It’s possible CA was driving more of the year over year gains.

 

[MisterPenguin]

The other factor is we don’t have a breakdown of DLR vs WDW. It’s possible CA was driving more of the year over year gains.

Totally all attributable to Pixar Pier.

 

[GoofGoof]

Totally all attributable to Pixar Pier.

Seriously, or is that sarcasm? Which moves the needle more: Pixar Pier or Toy Story Land? My gut says the answer is neither