FanBoy’s Highlights of Q1 Earnings Conference Call

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Following today’s earnings announcement, Bob Iger and Jay Rasulo participated in a conference call with investors.

Here are some of my highlights from today’s conference call:

  • Bob reiterated that Disney will be making three types of films: big budget franchise films, animated films, and lower-budget brand building films
 
  • Avengers was used as an example of the benefit of franchise films.  The success of Marvel’s The Avengers caused Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World perform better than their previous installments.  Bob was very high on Captain America: The Winter Soldier saying that it will lead in to Avengers: Age of Ultron and upcoming episodes of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
 
  • It was reconfirmed that Frozen will be headed to Broadway following in the footsteps of Beauty & the Beast and The Lion King
 
  • Frozen is the number one animated film of all-time in South Korea.  This bodes well for the recent opening in China and the March opening in Japan.
 
  • Jay Rasulo said that the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train should be opening in the next few months, completing the Fantasyland expansion project.  No specific opening date was given.
 
  • The parts of MyMagic+ that have been rolled out are considered successful.
 
  • The adoption of FastPass+ is much higher than legacy FastPass
 
  • Walt Disney World credits MyMagic+ to allowing 3,000 additional guests per day into the MagicKingdom during the Christmas holiday season.
 
  • Bob said there is active development in bringing more Star Wars into the parks, both domestically and internationally.
 
  • We also should expect to see more of Frozen in the Disney Parks.
 
  • Disney Interactive is expected to experience a loss in the second quarter due to the timing of game releases.  This is part of the reason Disney Interactive is going through layoffs.
 
  • We should expect many future iterations of Disney Infinity.  It was strongly hinted that Marvel and Star Wars characters will be introduced in future versions.
 
  • Iger believes there is a strong possibility that they will be developing digital destinations for their brands.