Disney's blowout quarter proves it can still turn stories into empires. The stock soars 10%
Disney's (DIS) latest earnings report delivered a bit of old-school magic. Revenue rose 7% to $23.6 billion, up from $22.1 billion last year. EPS rose to $1.45 from last year's $1.21.
As the company works to steady its streaming ship, it's the theme parks that continue to do the heavy lifting, with higher prices, fuller cruise ships, and longer guest stays all contributing to that rising bottom line.
Disney stock rose 10.4% in Wednesday morning trading. The shares are still down about 8% so far this year.
Standout performance in parks
Revenue in the Parks, Experiences, and Products segment jumped 10% year over year to $8.4 billion, while operating income from domestic parks climbed 12% to $1.9 billion. Disney Cruise Line added the Disney Treasure to its fleet and expanded its itineraries. Guest spending also rose, thanks to add-ons like Genie+ and Lightning Lane.
Defying some analysts' fears that the trade war is weighing on American brands overseas, Disney's international parks turned in a strong quarter, with operating income up 7%. Hong Kong Disneyland even turned a profit—something that hasn't happened in years.
CEO Bob Iger called the parks 'a cornerstone of our business,' and with $60 billion earmarked for further buildouts over the next decade, the company is clearly betting that physical experiences will keep driving real-world dollars.
So far, the bet is working. Even amid a softening consumer economy, guests aren't balking at the price hikes.
Disney's storytelling machine is humming again, too.
Mufasa: The Lion King has now quietly pulled in over $720 million globally since its holiday release, and as Iger pointed out in his comments, Marvel's Thunderbolts is the top film in the world.
The rest of the 2025 lineup reads like a greatest-hits remix: Freakier Friday, Zootopia 2, Elio, Avatar: Fire and Ash, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps are all examples of the franchise extensions Disney is well known for.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Moana universe 'knows the way.' Moana 2 became one of the top three films of 2024, earning $1 billion at the box office, and has clocked 139 million streaming hours on Disney+ since March. The original remains the most-streamed film on the platform with an eye-watering 1.4 billion viewing hours — and like other Disney IP goes on minting cash by fueling attractions, stage shows, and character meet-and-greets across parks and cruise ships. It's less a virtuous cycle than a virtuous voyage.
Content powers streaming to modest growth
All this momentum is translating into modest growth for Disney+. The service added 1.4 million subscribers in Q2 to reach 126 million overall, driven by both domestic and international gains. Executives credited the strong content bank — especially Moana 2, Mufasa, and Daredevil: Born Again — for the bump in subscriptions and streaming revenue.
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Forbes
25 minutes ago
- Forbes
‘Fantastic Four: First Steps' Takes Second-Largest Opening Day Of 2025 At Box Office With $57 Million
'Fantastic Four: First Steps' raked in about $57 million at the domestic box office for its opening day, according to multiple outlets, marking the year's second-largest opening day so far and a win for Marvel and Disney about a year after they announced a reduction in film and TV show quantity to focus on quality. "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" released July 25. (Photo by) Getty Images The roughly $57 million 'Fantastic Four: First Steps' generated at the domestic box office Friday fell narrowly short of the opening day for 'A Minecraft Movie' ($57.11 million) and just topped opening day for DC Comics rival 'Superman' ($56.1 million), according to Variety. The film has netted about $106 million globally after securing $49.2 million overseas, setting itself up for an opening weekend of around $125 million, the same figure achieved by 'Superman' earlier this month. 'Fantastic Four: First Steps' is receiving praise from critics and fans alike, boasting an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7.6/10 on IMDb. With a production budget of about $200 million, the movie will need to keep pace with ticket sales to turn a profit, as Marvel's two other releases from this year, 'Captain America: Brave New World' and 'Thunderbolts*,' both lost money at the box office despite the latter film's positive reception. Get Forbes Breaking News Text Alerts : We're launching text message alerts so you'll always know the biggest stories shaping the day's headlines. Text 'Alerts' to (201) 335-0739 or sign up here . With its opening weekend alone, 'Fantastic Four: First Steps' out-earned the entire domestic run of 'Fantastic Four' (2015), an adaptation of the heroes that flopped hard at the domestic box office ($56.1 million) and received poor ratings. 'Fantastic Four: First Steps' will need to gross over $333.5 million to overtake the run of 'Fantastic Four' (2005), which was released during a turning point for comic book movies that took audiences by storm throughout the 2000s. Key Background 'Fantastic Four: First Steps' is the last of three Marvel movies released this year and filmed a few months after Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company would reduce output of Marvel movies and TV shows, making the announcement after a run of shows and films received underwhelming viewership and/or box office numbers. Iger told investors last year Disney was 'slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two, or a maximum of three.' Marvel's next movie is slated to release almost a full year from now, with 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' hitting theaters next summer before 'Avengers: Doomsday' in December. Further Reading Box Office: 'Fantastic Four: First Steps' Clobbers $57 Million Opening Day — Second-Biggest of the Year (Variety) 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' Heading Towards $220M-$230M Global Debut – International Box Office (Deadline)


USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
Trump's golf trip to Scotland reopens old wounds for some of his neighbors
BALMEDIE, Scotland − Long before talk of hush-money payments, election subversion or mishandling classified documents, before his executive orders were the subject of U.S. Supreme Court challenges, before he was the 45th and then the 47th president: on a wild and windswept stretch of beach in northeast Scotland, Donald Trump the businessman was accused of being a bad neighbor. "This place will never, ever belong to Trump," Michael Forbes, 73, a retired quarry worker and salmon fisherman, said this week as he took a break from fixing a roof on his farm near Aberdeen. The land he owns is surrounded, though disguised in places by trees and hedges, by a golf resort owned by Trump's family business in Scotland, Trump International Scotland. For nearly 20 years, Forbes and several other families who live in Balmedie have resisted what they describe as bullying efforts by Trump to buy their land. (He has denied the allegations.) They and others also say he's failed to deliver on his promises to bring thousands of jobs to the area. Those old wounds are being reopened as Trump returns to Scotland for a four-day visit beginning July 25. It's the country where his mother was born. He appears to have great affection for it. Trump is visiting his golf resorts at Turnberry, on the west coast about 50 miles from Glasgow, and at Balmedie, where Forbes' 23 acres of jumbled, tractor-strewn land, which he shares with roaming chickens and three Highland cows, abut Trump's glossy and manicured golf resort. On July 28, Trump will briefly meet in Balmedie with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to "refine" a recent U.S.-U.K. trade deal, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Golf, a little diplomacy: Trump heads to Scotland In Scotland, where estimates from the National Library of Scotland suggest that as many as 34 out of the 45 American presidents have Scottish ancestry, opinions hew toward the he's-ill-suited-for-the-job, according to surveys. "Trump? He just doesn't know how to treat people," said Forbes, who refuses to sell. What Trump's teed up in Scotland Part of the Balmedie community's grievances relate to Trump's failure to deliver on his promises. According to planning documents, public accounts and his own statements, Trump promised, beginning in 2006, to inject $1.5 billion into his golf project six miles north of Aberdeen. He has spent about $120 million. Approval for the development, he vowed, came with more than 1,000 permanent jobs and 5,000 construction gigs attached. Instead, there were 84, meaning fewer than the 100 jobs that already existed when the land he bought was a shooting range. Instead of a 450-room luxury hotel and hundreds of homes that Trump pledged to build for the broader community, there is a 19-room boutique hotel and a small clubhouse with a restaurant and shop that sells Trump-branded whisky, leather hip flasks and golf paraphernalia. Financial filings show that his course on the Menie Estate in Balmedie lost $1.9 million in 2023 − its 11th consecutive financial loss since he acquired the 1,400-acre grounds in 2006. Residents who live and work near the course say that most days, even in the height of summer, the fairway appears to be less than half full. Representatives for Trump International say the plan all along has been to gradually phase in the development at Balmedie and that it is not realistic or fair to expect everything to be built overnight. There's also support for Trump from some residents who live nearby, and in the wider Aberdeen business community. One Balmedie resident who lives in the shadow of Trump's course said that before Trump the area was nothing but featureless sand dunes and that his development, carved between those dunes, made the entire landscape look more attractive. Fergus Mutch, a policy advisor for the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, said Trump's golf resort has become a "key bit of the tourism offer" that attracts "significant spenders" to a region gripped by economic turmoil, steep job cuts and a prolonged downturn in its North Sea oil and gas industry. Trump in Scotland: Liked or loathed? Still, recent surveys show that 70% of Scots hold an unfavorable opinion of Trump. Despite his familial ties and deepening investments in Scotland, Trump is more unpopular among Scots than with the British public overall, according to an Ipsos survey from March. It shows 57% of people in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland don't view Trump positively. King Charles invites Trump: American president snags another UK state visit While in Balmedie this time, Trump will open a new 18-hole golf course on his property dedicated to his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was a native of Lewis, in Scotland's Western Isles. He is likely to be met with a wave of protests around the resort, as well as the one in Turnberry. The Stop Trump Coalition, a group of campaigners who oppose most of Trump's domestic and foreign policies and the way he conducts his private and business affairs, is organizing a protest in Aberdeen and outside the U.S. consulate in Edinburgh. During Trump's initial visit to Scotland as president, in his first term, thousands of protesters sought to disrupt his visit, lining key routes and booing him. One protester even flew a powered paraglider into the restricted airspace over his Turnberry resort that bore a banner that read, "Trump: well below par #resist." 'Terrific guy': The Trump-Epstein party boy friendship lasted a decade, ended badly Trump's course in Turnberry has triggered less uproar than his Balmedie one because locals say that he's invested millions of dollars to restore the glamour of its 101-year-old hotel and three golf courses after he bought the site in 2014. Trump versus the families Three families still live directly on or adjacent to Trump's Balmedie golf resort. They say that long before the world had any clue about what type of president a billionaire New York real estate mogul and reality-TV star would become, they had a pretty good idea. Forbes is one of them. He said that shortly after Trump first tried to persuade him and his late wife to sell him their farm, workers he hired deliberately sabotaged an underground water pipe that left the Forbes – and his mother, then in her 90s, lived in her own nearby house – without clean drinking water for five years. Trump International declined to provide a fresh comment on those allegations, but a spokesperson previously told USA TODAY it "vigorously refutes" them. It said that when workers unintentionally disrupted a pipe that ran into an "antiquated" makeshift "well" jointly owned by the Forbeses on Trump's land, it was repaired immediately. Trump has previously called Forbes a "disgrace" who "lives like a pig." 'I don't have a big enough flagpole' David Milne, 61, another of Trump's seething Balmedie neighbors, lives in a converted coast guard station with views overlooking Trump's course and of the dunes and the North Sea beyond. In 2009, Trump offered him and his wife about $260,000 for his house and its one-fifth acre of land, Milne said. Trump was caught on camera saying he wanted to remove it because it was "ugly." Trump, he said, "threw in some jewelry," a golf club membership (Milne doesn't play), use of a spa (not yet built) and the right to buy, at cost, a house in a related development (not yet constructed). Milne valued the offer at about half the market rate. When Milne refused that offer, he said that landscapers working for Trump partially blocked the views from his house by planting a row of trees and sent Milne a $3,500 bill for a fence they'd built around his garden. Milne refused to pay. Over the years, Milne has pushed back. He flew a Mexican flag at his house for most of 2016, after Trump vowed to build a wall on the southern American border and make Mexico pay for it. Milne, a health and safety consultant in the energy industry, has hosted scores of journalists and TV crews at his home, where he has patiently explained the pros and cons − mostly cons, in his view, notwithstanding his own personal stake in the matter − of Trump's development for the local area. Milne said that because of his public feud with Trump, he's a little worried a freelance MAGA supporter could target him or his home. He has asked police to provide protection for him and his wife at his home while Trump is in the area. He also said he won't be flying any flags this time, apart from the Saltire, Scotland's national flag. "I don't have a big enough flagpole. I would need one from Mexico, Canada, Palestine. I would need Greenland, Denmark − you name it," he said, running through some of the places toward which Trump has adopted what critics view as aggressive and adversarial policies. Dunes of great natural importance Martin Ford was the local Aberdeen government official who originally oversaw Trump's planning application to build the Balmedie resort in 2006. He was part of a planning committee that rejected it over environmental concerns because the course would be built between sand dunes that were designated what the UK calls a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the way they shift over time. The Scottish government swiftly overturned that ruling on the grounds that Trump's investment in the area would bring a much-needed economic boost. Neil Hobday, who was the project director for Trump's course in Balmedie, last year told the BBC he was "hoodwinked" by Trump over his claim that he would spend more than a billion dollars on it. Hobday said he felt "ashamed that I fell for it and Scotland fell for it. We all fell for it." The dunes lost their special status in 2020, according to Nature Scot, the agency that oversees such designations. It concluded that their special features had been "partially destroyed" by Trump's resort. Trump International disputes that finding, saying the issue became "highly politicized." For years, Trump also fought to block the installation of a wind farm off his resort's coast. He lost that fight. The first one was built in 2018. There are now 11 turbines. Ford has since retired but stands by his belief that allowing approval for the Trump resort was a mistake. "I feel cheated out of a very important natural habitat, which we said we would protect and we haven't," he said. "Trump came here and made a lot of promises that haven't materialized. In return, he was allowed to effectively destroy a nature site of great conservation value. It's not the proper behavior of a decent person." Forbes, the former quarry worker and fisherman, said he viewed Trump in similar terms. He said that Trump "will never ever get his hands on his farm." He said that wasn't just idle talk. He said he's put his land in a trust that specified that when he dies, it can't be sold for at least 125 years.


San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
North Bay Nissan dealership closes amid automaker's financial struggles
As its parent company struggles financially, a North Bay Nissan dealership has permanently closed. A note by the Petaluma dealership's employees on their website Friday afternoon announced the closure, which follows several others in the Bay Area in recent years. 'As of 3 pm on July 25th, we have officially concluded our operations as North Bay Nissan,' the statement said. 'It has been a true honor serving the Petaluma and North Bay communities and we are deeply grateful for your loyalty over the years.' More details were not immediately available Saturday morning. The closure comes as North Bay Nissan's parent company, Nissan Motor Co., has weathered significant losses in recent years, leading to factory closures and thousands of job cuts. The company entered the American market in the late 1950s and by the 1970s as one of the world's largest exporters of automobiles. But the automotive giant ran into serious trouble over the past decade after its former CEO was jailed for underreporting his income to Japanese financial authorities and scandal engulfed the company. Over the past five years, the company has laid off thousands of employees, cut production and closed factories. Last November, Nissan announced a plan to cut thousands more employees, and one executive reportedly warned that without a major turnaround, the company would cease to exist in '12 to 14 months.' Nissan's troubles only grew this year, when the carmaker posted its worst financial results in 25 years and after President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on imported vehicles, which make up a significant portion of the company's U.S. sales. Several other Nissan dealerships have also closed in recent years, including showrooms in Burlingame, Fresno and Antioch.