
Profits for the Walt Disney Co. (DIS) were up a healthy 27 percent for the quarter ending on March 31, exeeding all expectations.
The major profit drivers were its international TV syndication, the film studio and ESPN's strong advertising draw.
On the movie studio side, the surprising middle-age crisis film "Wild Hogs" performed extraordinarily well, a major reason for the performance.
Another key to the quarterly profits were continuing cost cuts at the studio.
General revenue for the mouse overall was flat.
In a conference call Robert Iger said that he was very happy with the revenue being generated from its Internet division, with distribution of its show growing strongly. On the ABC.com Web site alone, there have been 92 million ad-supported episodes watched. And on the Disney Web site it was almost the same with 91 million shows being viewed.
Iger is also pleased with the progress their partnership with Apple iTunes (AAPL) where they've sold close to 23.7 million TV episodes and another 2 million movies
through the iTunes store.
Net income for the quarter according to Disney was $931 million, a strong increase over the $733 million they produced during the same quarter last year. As far as per share goes, this year it was 44 cents versus last year's 37 cents a share.
Like I said, revenue was generally flat, with this quarter bringing $8.07 billion, while last year it was $8.03 billion for the same quarter.
I thing Disney may have set themselves up for skyrocketing growth. The fact that their focus on becoming lean and mean has paid dividends, as shown by the fact that every unit in the company reported a profit. Now they will be able to start focusing on generating more revenue.
Now with their focus back on their core demographic of being family-focused, this all bodes really well for them.
With the upcoming releases of "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" and "Ratatouille," they should drive a tremendous amount of DVD sales, along with the consumer product sales that will come with it.
This should be a great year for the company.







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Tracked on: May 10, 2007 8:33 PM | Permalink to Trackback