{"id":36078,"date":"2023-09-21T19:44:19","date_gmt":"2023-09-21T23:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=36078"},"modified":"2023-09-21T19:44:33","modified_gmt":"2023-09-21T23:44:33","slug":"disney-ceo-hints-at-ceasefire-in-its-ongoing-culture-war-with-florida-social-conservatives-while-unveiling-plans-to-invest-60b-in-theme-parks-and-cruise-ships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/09\/21\/disney-ceo-hints-at-ceasefire-in-its-ongoing-culture-war-with-florida-social-conservatives-while-unveiling-plans-to-invest-60b-in-theme-parks-and-cruise-ships\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney CEO hints at ceasefire in its ongoing culture war with Florida social conservatives \u2014 while unveiling plans to invest $60B in theme parks and cruise ships"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Walt Disney chief Bob Iger has hinted at a possible ceasefire in the culture war between the global media and entertainment conglomerate and its socially conservative critics \u2014 telling investors the company will \u201cquiet the noise,\u201d according to an analyst report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The CEO\u2019s new strategy comes as Disney remains at legal loggerheads with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis \u2014 a dispute that kicked off when the entertainment giant protested the state\u2019s so-called \u201cDon’t Say Gay\u201d bill, which banned classroom discussion of sexual orientation or general identity for Florida public school students between kindergarten and Grade 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When then-Disney CEO Bob Chapek spoke out against the law, officially called Florida\u2019s Parental Rights in Education, DeSantis responded with an aggressive campaign against \u201cwoke Disney\u201d and worked with state legislature to strip the company of its 56-year-standing \u201cindependent special district\u201d status \u2014 which allowed Disney to create its own regulations, building codes, and other municipal services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the ongoing legal battles, it seems Disney\u2019s new boss is keen to change the discourse and recover the trust of investors \u2014 after the company\u2019s stock fell to a low of $80.57 in early September, a far cry from its peak price of $197 in March 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disney\u2019s growth plans<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an investors\u2019 presentation on Tuesday at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, Iger announced the company\u2019s plans to spend $60 billion on theme parks and cruise ships \u2014 almost doubling its investment \u2014 over the next decade, according to a report in the New York Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether those park investments will happen in the Sunshine State remains to be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to keep growing and investing and have ambitious plans in Florida,\u201d Josh D\u2019Amaro, chairman of the parks division, told the New York Times. \u201cFor the benefit of our guests, our cast members and the economy of central Florida, we hope the conditions will be there for us to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the giant is struggling to make its streaming business profitable and figure out a viable future for its television networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When announcing Disney\u2019s growth plans this week, Iger wrote in a blog post: \u201cWe\u2019re incredibly mindful of the financial underpinning of the company, the need to continue to grow in terms of bottom line, the need to invest wisely so that we\u2019re increasing the returns on invested capital, and the need to maintain a balance sheet, for a variety of reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe company is able to absorb those costs and continue to grow the bottom line and look expansively at how we return value and capital to our shareholders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this a good move for investors?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After attending the investors\u2019 presentation in Orland, Needham media analyst Laura Martin wrote a report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the report, Martin says the company\u2019s pivot from streaming (via Disney+) to parks, ships, hotels and timeshares got her wondering about what the move might reveal about what Disney assumes will be its growth drivers for the next decade. And she appeared skeptical that parks is the correct focus for the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe worry that the strong margins and ROICs (return on invested capital) at Parks today are related to the cyclical rebound from the forced COVID park closures in 2020 and 2021, and therefore $60 billion of capital allocations are being made based on unsustainable and elevated profit margins,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe ROICs of physical assets is almost always lower and riskier than the virtual world. We like the idea that growth can return to [Disney], but we believe that [Disney\u2019s] valuation multiple based on Park [revenue] growth would be materially lower than expected [revenue] growth for films, TV and streaming, as it has been historically.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walt Disney chief Bob Iger has hinted at a possible ceasefire in the culture war between the global media and entertainment conglomerate and its socially conservative critics \u2014 telling investors… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[6043],"class_list":["post-36078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional-and-world-news","tag-disney-ceo-hints-at-ceasefire-in-its-ongoing-culture-war-with-florida"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}