Walt Disney Co. handily beat earnings expectations even after stripping out big gains from an acquisition in a quarterly report Wednesday, but movie-studio revenue slipped ahead of a coming windfall.
Disney reported earnings for the fiscal second quarter — which ended before “Endgame” began raking in big bucks, but did include returns from the prequel “Captain Marvel” — of $5.45 billion, or $3.56 a share, on sales of $14.92 billion, up from $14.55 billion a year ago. Much of the big beat was from a noncash gain of nearly $5 billion from its acquisition of a controlling interest in the Hulu streaming service.
Disney reported movie-studio revenue of $2.13 billion; television revenue of $5.52 billion, with $3.71 billion attributed to cable networks and $1.82 billion to broadcast networks; theme-park revenue of $6.17 billion; and direct-to-consumer sales of $955 million. Analysts on average expected TV revenue of $5.66 billion, movie-studio revenue of $2.27 billion, theme-park revenue of $6.06 billion, and direct-to-consumer sales of $1.1 billion, according to FactSet.