(Newswire.net — November 19, 2020) — With the end of the coronavirus pandemic still nowhere in sight many individuals and companies are struggling to find a financially stable path forward. One such company is Walt Disney Co. which has suffered massive losses on its two main fronts of income – theme parks and the production of its movie studios.
Back in September Disney announced that it would lay off 28,000 of their employees, mostly coming from theme parks, resorts and cruise lines. Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney parks stated that most of those who were laid off were part time workers who were paid by the hour.
The Disney Company also reported an estimated $700 million loss of revenue for the fourth financial quarter of 2020, the period spanning from July to September. This was a second consecutive quarterly loss and the first such loss in more than 40 years.
Analysts from S&P Global Ratings Naveen Sarma and Jawad Hussain wrote in a report on Wednesday that they expect Disney’s operating performance will not normalize until 2022.
The financial hardship was reflected on the value of the company stock, which dropped by 39 cents a share, but it didn’t suffer as much as it was expected.
Part of the reason for this lies in the successful launch of the Disney+ streaming platform, with a reported 73 million users by September 2020. This exceeded even some of the most optimistic projections Disney had for their online video service. With the lack of new theater releases we are left to wonder if the upcoming announced titles that have been pushed back several times will suffer the same fate as Mulan – being released as an exclusive online purchase.
Disney is still looking to mitigate its losses and was critical of the state of California’s refusal to allow them to reopen their theme parks, with executives now expecting them to remain closed at least until the end of the year. Some of their Asian based theme parks and resorts managed to reopen in the summer, such as the one in Tokyo that reopened on July 1.