Walt Disney reported quarterly earnings that missed expectations on Thursday.
Disney posted earnings of $1.10 per share on revenue of $13.14 billion for its fiscal fourth quarter. Revenue from last year was down 3 percent.
Disney was expected to report about $1.16 on its shares of $13.52 billion in revenue, which it did not do.
However, revenue for the year was actually up 6 percent to $55.6 billion, a record number. Net income for the year was up 12 percent, hitting a record $9.4 billion.
Attendance at the U.S. parks was down for the quarter, though Walt Disney World itself was close to even. Attendance was down 10 percent due to one less week in the quarter; with that extra week, it would have only amounted to a 3 percent decrease.
Iger talked about ways to increase revenue, including possibly adding more hotels. “We also have other kinds of expansion opportunities, like hotels, for instance. Not only do we have the property, but we’ve seen such high occupancy rates in Orlando and California, we believe it would be smart for us to build more hotels out… at both sites.”
He was asked if ticket prices would be going up and said that was not the only option for raising revenue. “We believe we still have pricing leverage and that’s not just from raising prices on your standard ticket. It’s from creating new packages… When we put in more demand-oriented pricing, we were able to move some attendance away from the peak period and improve guest satisfaction. But we believe there are a number of tools available to us on the revenue yield management side to create more revenue out of the attendance that we’re getting.”
In spite of the decreased attendance, “per-person spending increased 7 percent because of higher prices and spending on food and beverages.”
Looking forward to the current quarter’s results, Disney noted that “Hurricane Matthew will have a $40 million impact on operating income.” Due to the storm and the fact that rooms at Wilderness Lodge were turned into DVC units, resort attendance for the current quarter is already down 2 percent.
“We’re very pleased with our performance for the year, delivering the highest revenue, net income and earnings per share in Disney’s history,” the company’s CEO, Bob Iger, said in a statement.
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