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Disney plans to invest a whopping $60 billion in its theme parks and cruise-line arm as they continue to be the big money makers for the company.
The House of Mouse plans to double its expenditures in the parks, experiences and products arm of the business over the next 10 years.
"We're 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're increasing the returns on invested capital, and the need to maintain a balance sheet, for a variety of reasons," said Disney CEO Bob Iger at a gathering of Wall Street analysts and investors at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday.
"The 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."
Disney has seven out of the top 10 most attended theme parks in the world, and has more than 1,000 acres of land for possible future development to expand theme park space across its existing sites. That's the size of about seven new Disneyland Parks.
New Frozen-themed lands at Hong Kong Disneyland, Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris and Tokyo Disney Resort, as well as a Zootopia-themed land at Shanghai Disney Resort, are examples of way in which the company wants to mine its intellectual property to help grow the business.
"We have a wealth of untapped stories to bring to life across our business," said Disney Parks, experiences and products chairman Josh D'Amaro at the Orlando gathering.
"Frozen, one of the most successful and popular animated franchises of all time, could have a presence at the Disneyland Resort. Wakanda has yet to be brought to life. The world of Coco is just waiting to be explored. There's a lot of storytelling opportunity."
Disney is also going to almost double the worldwide capacity of its cruise-line arm, adding two ships in 2025 and another in 2026, the first of which will be its biggest ship yet, hosting 6,000 passengers. The new ship will dock in Singapore, opening up Disney to the lucrative Asia-Pacific market.
The announcement comes just weeks after Disney revealed its streaming service, Disney+, was still struggling and in debt after a lackluster year.
Disney+ lost subscribers during the most recent financial quarter, it had 146.1 million globally, below the quarter's target of 154.8 million.
Iger promised the investors and analysts in Orlando that Disney+ would be profitable by 2024. It intends implementing a range of measures including, cost cutting, changes to subscription pricing, cracking down on password sharing and expanding its ad-supported plans to more markets.
As Disney+ struggles to break even, its movie department is also having a relatively tough time. Thanks to some worse than expected performances at the box office, including Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Haunted Mansion, Disney is on track to not have at least one movie in the top three earners of the year. It is the first time that has happened since 2009 at the international box office and 2011 domestically.
"The studio has had a tremendous run over the past decade, perhaps the greatest run that any studio has ever had, with multiple billion dollar hits[...]that said, the performance of some of our recent films has definitely been disappointing and we don't take that lightly," said Iger.
Disney stocks fell to $82 after the gathering in Orlando, matching the three-year-low in late August.
About the writer
Shannon Power is a Greek-Australian reporter, but now calls London home. They have worked as across three continents in print, ... Read more