Citi Global Technology Conference Christine Mccarthy

Citi Global Technology Conference Christine Mccarthy

Citi Global Technology Conference SEPTEMBER 9, 2020 Disney Speakers: Christine McCarthy Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer ©Disney Citi Global Technology Conference SEPTEMBER 9, 2020 PRESENTATION Jason Bazinet – Citigroup Inc. All right. I think we're now live, Christine. So we're very fortunate to have Christine McCarthy, Chief Financial Officer of The Walt Disney Company. Good afternoon, Christine. How are you? Christine McCarthy – Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, The Walt Disney Company Good. How are you, Jason? Jason Bazinet – Citigroup Inc. I’m doing great, I’m doing great. Thank you for taking some time to spend with us and your institutional investors. I guess I was just going to start with just a handful of questions. And then maybe towards the back end, we'll open it up to any questions that investors have. But just to start, I guess when I think about the time that I have followed your company, this environment seems like perhaps the most challenging Disney's ever experienced. And I would just like to start by giving you a chance to talk about what you've learned about the firm and the operations in the COVID environment and anything that sort of surprised you and what changes, if any, or opportunities COVID might present to sort of long-term shareholders in terms of things that might change in the business. Christine McCarthy – Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, The Walt Disney Company Sure. It's a great question because I think when you look at our businesses and the fact that we're dealing with a global pandemic, it was pretty significant to our operations. It's no secret to Page 2 Citi Global Technology Conference SEPTEMBER 9, 2020 anyone who follows the company that our Parks businesses were impacted pretty immediately. All of them were shut down in March. Some of them were shut down before that, those in Asia: Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo, before the U.S. domestic parks as well as Paris also closed. Our cruise business was impacted. Theatrical distribution of films was impacted. Live sports pretty much rolled up and didn't happen for a while, although we are welcoming them back now, albeit with some adjustments to a normal sports calendar. And then we had to even look at things like production of content. We were able to continue some production that could be done on a remote basis. Those are things like animation that can be facilitated in a remote environment, post-production, some pre-production, but live, in- person productions had to cease. So when you think about all those things, it pretty much impacted most of our businesses. Even our retail business, the physical retail, even though it's not a large component, the Disney stores worldwide were closed up for a while. And what we saw was that people, consumers, our guests, our customers, they transitioned to an online experience with us, and that was primarily through our direct-to-consumer platforms. And I thank timing that we launched Disney+ last November. That was -- sometimes it's -- timing worked out for us, and this certainly did in this instance. And also Hulu has been up and running as well as ESPN+. But our businesses were really, really impacted. Now what do we learn from it? We learned that we have to take the opportunity that this crisis is presenting, and that's really looking at how we operate our businesses. The cost structure of our businesses is just something that we, as well as any large corporate, is taking a look at that I know of. And we're also knowing that people can work differently. It's the physical presence in offices, depending on what you do, is something that can be modified. And that has a downstream effect on costs associated with companies as well, especially when you think about the physical plants that they operate in, even office buildings. But things -- some of our Page 3 Citi Global Technology Conference SEPTEMBER 9, 2020 businesses will always require physical presence, our parks business certainly will, and also physical production of content. And then just a couple of other things that I think are worth mentioning, Jason. DTC, our direct- to-consumer efforts, were something that Bob Iger really stressed and drove us towards for several years prior to COVID hitting us. And then Bob Chapek who became CEO, and then, boom, within weeks, we were dealing with the COVID environment. He has continued to stress the emphasis that we're putting and the acceleration that we're putting on our direct-to- consumer efforts. And even things like -- that we have adjusted -- now I think one of the things that we're trying to be is nimble, flexible and nimble. And when we have intended to put things on the Disney+ service, we're modifying some of them. And for instance, we moved up the SVOD window for a few of our titles, Onward, Frozen II and The Rise of Skywalker, they all came on to the service earlier than we had anticipated. And we also put some new content on. Hamilton is a good case in point, as well as Beyonce’s Black Is King. And now you've seen what we've done with the Premier Access for Mulan, and that was really based on the fact that theaters, some are open. In the U.S., only 68% of theaters are open. And we thought that this was the best way to release Mulan into the public not only in the U.S., but on a global basis. And I can talk a little bit about that later if you have more questions on Mulan. Jason Bazinet – Citigroup Inc. That would be great. What about -- if I had to summarize the cadence of the recovery, at least from the companies we cover coming out of 2Q, everyone characterized 2Q as the bottom, that sort of the cadence of the recovery, maybe it was a bit more muted as it came out. And I guess I'm mostly speaking Page 4 Citi Global Technology Conference SEPTEMBER 9, 2020 about the advertising side more than the parks side. But how would you characterize sort of the nature of the recovery as things slowly move back to normal? And what guideposts would you suggest investors pay the most attention to of all the things that they can look at? Christine McCarthy – Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, The Walt Disney Company That's another great question. These are unprecedented times. And a lot of our reopening is not just our decision. It's not -- we're not fully in control. Many of our businesses -- once again, I'll point to parks, but also production activities, are directed by government and health officials. So what you've seen is some openings of parks, different places in the world, we're opening a little bit differently, once again accommodating the local restrictions or guidelines that are given to us to operate under. But we're prioritizing the well-being of our -- not only our casts, but also our guests. And we -- once again, we have to work with the local governments. We have to work, whether it's county, whether it's state, whether it's a jurisdiction outside of the U.S., we have to comply with, and we willingly comply with the guidelines that were given. So I think if you look at what we talked about last earnings in early August, we had reopened Walt Disney World in mid-July. And we said that --there was a surge in July of COVID infections in the state of Florida. So the expectation that we had planned for -- because in June, it was lower and then it ramped up in July. Some of the visitation to Walt Disney World was not what we had expected, especially from people traveling from outside of the state. So what we did is, once again, to be nimble and flexible, we adjusted our offerings where we opened it up more to local visitation, particularly the annual passholders. So those are things just that we're doing and we'll have to ebb and flow as the rate of infection hopefully will stay low. But if it creeps back up, we may have to adjust accordingly. And once again, the -- from our studio side, we have gradually adjusted getting back into productions. But once again, that's working with the authorities that govern that. And a lot of Page 5 Citi Global Technology Conference SEPTEMBER 9, 2020 that would be unions and guilds in addition to state authorities in the U.S. And once again, it depends on what we're doing and where we're doing it in the world. Jason Bazinet – Citigroup Inc. Okay. When I go back to the last Analyst Day that you had in California, you guys laid out some subscriber targets and some financial targets for the DTCI segment as Disney+ launched. And I think everyone has been extraordinarily pleased with your robust subscriber additions that you put up sort of across all of the various apps. What I can't quite figure out when I sort of look at some of your competitors like Netflix is what does that mean for the financials? In other words, you could sort of take those larger subscriber numbers and say, wow, there's a lot of demand for this, maybe it exceeded our expectations.

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