Shares of Disney plunged more than 2 percent on Monday after a Wall Street analyst warned that the company has a lot of work to do before recovering from the epidemic and its economic downturn.
Although Disney’s long investor presentation on Friday revealed about its rival Disney + streaming service, BMO analyst Daniel Salmon downgraded the value of Disney stocks from “performance” to “market performance”. Bought shares of the company last week.
In a statement titled “Now begins the hard part”, Salmon said Monday that Disney +, which has had more than 80 million subscribers since last fall, has decided to “move aside”. Performances for the next few years, including 10 new “Star Wars” series.
“We hope the improved vaccination rates will help Disney continue to be a solid‘ reopening ’play,” he wrote. “Of course the Disney + sub-forecasts exceeded very positive expectations and were supported by incredible new content.”
Nevertheless, the analyst cited the uncertainties associated with the epidemic that crushed the company’s theme park and film businesses. Salmon said he liked media stocks like Netflix, Google and Amazon, even though a Govt-19 vaccine was being produced.
Part of Salmon’s rationale is that the company has been plagued by live sports epidemics due to a lack of detail on how to develop ESPN +, the streaming brand ESPN. He also said that Disney did not provide an update on “Disney + and major films moving against theatrical currents”.
Unlike rival Warner Bros., which recently decided to release its 2021 movies on HBO Max a month after they were screened in theaters, Disney has taken a more conventional approach. Next year’s theaters have three big films, including “Black Widow” (May 7), which came a year late due to the Corona virus novel.