• by Wayne Friedman , February 5, 2025

Walt Disney’s had rising streaming profitability in its recent quarterly reporting period -- but also an eye-opening decrease in its Disney+ subscribers.

Disney’s Tuesday mid-day stock price was down 2.4% to $110.95.

Disney streaming global subscribers dipped 1% to 124.6 million, with U.S./Canada subscribers inching up 1% to 56.8 million.

The company forecasts another slip in subscribers in the following quarter.

In somewhat better news, domestic advertising from networks/platforms was up 6%, according to estimates from Madison & Wall.

Taking out big Presidential-year political advertising, core advertising grew 3%. The gain was largely attributable to 15% gain by ESPN from the College Football Playoffs, according to the company.

Disney’s streaming advertising revenue grew 16% in the period -- sans its Disney+ Hotstar results. Ad revenue for the India-based service sank to $15 million from $165 million period the year before.

Total direct-to-consumer (D2C) streaming business rose 9% to $6.1 billion and -- following a previous profitable quarter in the fourth quarter -- it posted $293 million in operating income. Disney's streaming business had a $138 million net loss in the similar year ago period.

Rising revenues came via higher prices versus a year ago. Despite the hikes for Disney+ and other streaming services, Brian Wieser, media analyst at Madison & Wall, says:

“Our view is that there remains significant ongoing upside opportunity for streaming services to raise pricing despite concerns around affordability. The primary reason is that consumers spend even greater amounts of money on traditional pay TV services, which they can eliminate to fund spending on streamers.”

Domestic linear TV revenues and operating income were flat with that of a year ago at $2.2 billion and $837 million, respectively. Global linear TV operating income networks were down 11% to $1.1 billion.