Conference Transcript - DIS 2026-05-14

Operator

This event may include forward-looking statements, which are statements that are not historical and are based on management's assumptions regarding the future and are subject to risks and uncertainties, including, among other factors, economic, geopolitical, operating and industry conditions, competition, execution risks, our future financial performance, and legal and regulatory developments. Additional information concerning factors and risks that could cause results to differ from those in the forward-looking statements are set forth in the company's securities filings.

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

I think with that, we are excited to get going. We are very, very excited to have Hugh Johnston here, CFO of the Walt Disney Company. Thank you again for being here. And obviously, lots to talk about, especially after the official first earnings call with Josh's taking over as CEO. So just let's kind of start really big picture with Josh taking over. Maybe help us think about what you're most excited about looking ahead with the leadership change and how that allows Disney to maybe do things a little bit differently or even build upon what, obviously, Bob has accomplished over the past few years.

Hugh Johnston, CFO

Yeah, happy to talk about that. Nice to be with you all. You know, anytime you change CEO, it's kind of an exciting time. And if you don't count our little thing from a couple of years ago, Bob basically was CEO for 20 years, so it's an even more substantial change in the company. That said, I think everybody is very, very energized around Josh coming in and taking over. Number one, he's been with the company for a long, long time anyway, has huge followership around the company. Number two, the fact that Dana Walden is also going to be here as well as chief creative officer and president of the company. We had the good fortune of retaining two terrific executives, and oftentimes when you have CEO change, you don't get that. If you sort of step back a little bit, the biggest thing that I think Josh is bringing so far, and we're basically seven, eight weeks in at this point, so it's early days, but he's talking a lot, and we're leaning into a lot. How do we accelerate the company? So how do we get the growth rates up? How do we energize the company? to move faster and to deliver stronger results. And that's an exciting change. Now, that's not a massive pivot from where Bob was, but if you think about where we were with Bob just a couple of years ago, he sort of laid down four planks of what he wanted to do. Number one, get creative going in the right direction because it had gotten a little off. Number two was build on ESPN. Number three was make DTC profitable. And number four was turbocharge the parks. Well, if you look at where we are now, we've checked all those boxes in a pretty substantial way. So I think what I'm most excited about with Josh, and you saw it in the three planks that he laid out, he really spent his entire career with Disney at the parks. And one of the things the parks has that the entertainment side up until the last couple of years didn't have is really a direct consumer relationship. Josh is used to dealing with fans, used to dealing with it, not through intermediaries, not through third parties, but on a one-on-one basis. And as we start to pivot the company, not start, as we continue to pivot the company even more towards that direct consumer relationship, Josh has wonderful instincts in that regard. He understands the segmentation of our consumers. He understands what fans care about. So I think that connection directly to the fan is actually going to be a big deal broadly for us. And then even more specifically, because of that intuition that he has as an experienced guy, the DTC service, Disney+, will benefit massively from his direct interaction with Disney fans over the course of the last couple of decades.

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

Okay, we look forward to seeing that. So when you think about the combination that's been laid out, creativity, quality, and this global scale, When thinking about how the company leans in, and you're talking about accelerating over the next couple of years, how does that best position Disney as far as this pivot goes when thinking about the next decade plus?

Hugh Johnston, CFO

Yeah, so if you look at all of those things, creativity is always going to be first. That's the essence of the Walt Disney Company. And I don't think of them as sort of being competing. I think of them as almost sequential in a way, right? But creativity is the value creation engine of the company. And then the other things that we do are basically amplifiers. So if you look at some of the things that we've done in terms of real creativity, whether it's as far back as Toy Story or more recently Zootopia 2 or more recently The Bear, those are all examples of great creativity. Then when you take that and add to it the scale that we have and the quality that we deliver, it sort of gets that flywheel going in a significant way, and that then plays into, okay, now we've benefited ourselves theatrically, we benefit from the streaming service, we benefit in the parks, we benefit in consumer products. So it all sort of ties together very, very nicely once we get that creative going. So I couldn't be more excited about what it is that we're trying to do. And given the momentum that Bob left us with in terms of the creative side, I think we're going to be able to deliver really strong results for quite a while.

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

So something that all of us in the room would love a specific way to understand this. From your perspective, what is the best way to really unlock the value that we see and that we think is embedded in the Disney stock price today?

Hugh Johnston, CFO

Yeah. As much as you guys want it, I assure you I want it more than any of you do for both financial and personal reasons. I think when you think about what it's going to take to unlock stock price, let me step back and say, what are the things that we're focused on as a management team? We're focused on long-term growth, because we know long-term growth is really the ultimate value creator. We're focused on making sure that we deliver consistent performance, because that's the kind of company we are. We should be able to deliver consistently, not necessarily perfectly every single quarter. Obviously, there's a little bit of variability to the performance. I've sort of often joked, I'd like to get the roller coasters out of the stock price and then just keep them in the parks. But, you know, there's always a little bit of variation, given the movies and things like that that we do. We're focused on capital allocation and making sure that we're delivering the right types of returns on the way that we allocate capital. And if we do those things well, that basically makes this company the earnings compounder that I've been talking about since I've gotten here. And I think we do have the ability to do that, to sort of focus on all of those three things. And with that, basically do a couple things. One, make our vision and strategy very clear to ourselves internally and then clear to you all externally. Off of that, build financial plans that make sense. Off of that, give you all guidance that we commit to. And then after that, we work like hell to execute and make sure that we deliver that guidance, that to me makes us the earnings compounder that, frankly, I think we'll deserve and earn a higher multiple over time. And that's really what we're trying to do is get that earnings compounding, not just going, because I think we've had it going, but to just build that reliable track record in all of your minds. And with that, the multiple goes up, and I think the gap between what I think the company is worth right now and where we're trading at is going to close. In that regard, one of the things that you all are aware of and we announced again last week is we're going to buy back at least $8 billion worth of stock, which is a pretty significant number in the context of our size company. That's because we have so much confidence that we're buying it at a very, very good price. That, in fact, it's actually an excellent investment for our investors, us taking that stock and buying it back.

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

So when you think about this future for Disney over the next five plus years, another question that we get a lot is, what do we think about in terms of the portfolio size? size? Should we think about a similar level of assets, a scaled down, maybe more specific Disney-branded type of portfolio, or even potentially a larger portfolio? I know you guys have made significant acquisitions looking backwards, but as we think about the next few years ahead, what's the best way to frame that for you?

Hugh Johnston, CFO

Yeah, I don't know that thinking about it larger versus smaller is necessarily the right way to think about it. The thing that matters most to us is how integrated are the assets into that value creation model that we talk about. We're talking about One Disney, and One Disney is essentially what I laid out earlier. The notion of great creativity in terms of value creation then leads to value monetization, whether it's on screens or whether it's in physical experiences. The assets that are tethered to that. And by the way, I do think sports is tethered to that, to be very, very clear. Those are the ones that are going to be most important to us and that's what we're going to continue to grow and continue to invest in and build on. Assets that are not connected to that in a fairly discreet way, we're going to look very hard at. And, you know, we have been doing that and we'll continue to do it, but we're only going to make moves that are value creating at the end of the day. That's the real, you know, that's the line. Okay.

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

So let's shift to streaming. If you can help us understand what that long-term vision is for how the current streaming services can best compete for these global other streaming companies. Of course, Netflix, Amazon, we just had YouTube present. So when you think about the competitive set looking forward within streaming, where's Disney's position within that?

Hugh Johnston, CFO

Yeah, so, you know, obviously the industry is continuing to evolve. And we have a lot of respect for what YouTube has built. We have a lot of respect for what Netflix has built. But we also think we have a unique set of capabilities and assets that will enable us to be successful. Number one, we have basically the largest collection of most emotionally resonant IP of anyone, by far. It's not even close. And those two companies that you just mentioned, they don't even really have that in a substantive way. Number two, we obviously have sports. and that obviously that that is something that the rest of the industry is trying to go towards we're already there and then number three we have the physical experiences business the parks business and our ability to sort of monetize in in that integrated way i think is is an advantage for us so if you think about where disney plus and hulu are going they're going to be leveraging those those particular capabilities so obviously we we leverage the creativity that we bring we're looking at sports in in a more significant way are there opportunities for you know having one one app for disney yeah over time we we do think that that's out there and with that the parks will be integrated into all of that as well to me that that's significant competitive advantage that's awfully hard to replicate and i think that that's the way we're going to compete we should be able to compete successfully and and win with with that set of assets so i guess just

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

building upon that when we think about disney plus you've talked about being the digital centerpiece of this whole future disney company so think about how does this accelerate the total company if you want to say total company revenues or even just specifically when we think about dtc revenues and profits and you touched on bringing disney plus to the in park guest experience like

Hugh Johnston, CFO

how does that all factor in and play out yeah i mean if you sort of think about what what we're doing by by virtue of bringing bringing fans together and making it the digital centerpiece it gives us the ability to touch our fans and to grow our fan base more and more right and by virtue of touching them more and more it gives us the ability to basically to sell them more to build that emotional connection more and to to expand the disney franchise more and all of that ultimately translates into revenue growth in addition to that once you have your fans in into your ecosystem and remember this ecosystem to me is not just about disney assets because even right now we carry more than just disney assets and in disney plus um i my expectation is it is a portal into all things entertainment over time right i think it'll be bigger than than just disney in terms of bundling and the way that that things come together building that relationship to me is something that will generate revenue and in addition to that it's more efficient to market to the fans once you have them in your app and that'll allow us to reduce marketing costs over

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

time so i think it's a combination of both okay so any more context maybe just as we think about this one disney idea and and platform and where it's all going can you frame like what the overall TAM is for us, or maybe even more specifically, when we think about entertainment SVOD, you guys have broken that out for us now, revenue, and how that translates into the question that you always get, where do the long-term margins go for this platform?

Hugh Johnston, CFO

Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to put a public TAM out there today, so we're not going to make that news. As you might imagine, from a strategy perspective, we do look at that, but I don't want to go to that place just yet. But the way I do think about it, though, is all of those assets that we have, the ultimate goal is to drive engagement. And the more that we can do to connect with our broad audience of Disney fans will enable us to increase engagement over time. Now, that engagement will come out of a combination of content, also in conjunction with that bundling, which obviously we know reduces churn and therefore drives engagement and therefore allows us to spend less marketing money as well as connect with our fans more significantly. In addition to that, the technology side of things, we're working hard to improve the product. And with that improved product, we know that that also drives engagement up, drives churn down. And that engagement to me is the critical variable to actually drive long-term margins because when you have that level of engagement it reduces your cost but in addition to that it allows us basically permission to price so that that's sort of how we're thinking about that that said i don't want to be hamstrung when back when i got here a couple years ago you know the business was losing a billion bucks a year and i'm i was going around five weeks into the job and basically hearing from all of you hey disney plus i mean I mean, how does this thing even make sense? You're losing, you know, last year you lost $4 billion. You know, this year you lost $1 billion. What are you guys going to do about that? And I said, look, you know, we're trying to build a good business. The good business starts with double-digit margins, right? If it doesn't have that, what's the point of being in business? So we got aligned as a team around that. We committed to it, and you saw last quarter we actually delivered the double-digit margins, and we reiterated we'll do at least double-digit for the current year. That said, to me, that is a good example of the guidance we commit, we execute, we deliver to you all what we said we were going to deliver. That said, I also want to make sure we don't in any way intend to go backwards, but this is a business we want to manage for top-line growth as well as manage for margins. It's strategically important to us. We think the opportunity exists. Certainly, international exists as an opportunity. As I said, our ultimate goal is to drive the profitability of the business. The margins will not go backwards, but I wouldn't necessarily sort of model out X or Y every year. I would think more about what's the bottom line growth going to be, and is it going to be led by top line? And if we're accomplishing that, then I kind of feel like we're doing the right things for that business and the right things for the company.

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

Okay. So you touched on this a little bit before, but when you think about the larger capital allocation story for the company, obviously free cash flow generation plays a critical role within that. So when we think about how you prioritize reinvesting in content spending that you also just touched on to help accelerate the growth of the streaming versus allowing those dollars to be reinvested through capital returns and others. So help us think about that balance and how you prioritize that content spending.

Hugh Johnston, CFO

Yeah, so we had talked about earlier in the year $19 billion of cash flow from operations. We got very specific with that number. And we also said we should generate or we should spend about $9 billion in CapEx as a part of turbocharging the parks. So obviously that leaves us with about $10 billion of CFO. We're basically in that place. in terms of content spending last year we spent 23 billion we've indicated to you all we're going to spend about 24 billion this year but we're also prioritizing and managing the mix more towards international because we see that as as the most significant growth opportunity for for the DTC business the opportunity domestically is about driving engagement the opportunity internationally is about clearly gaining more subs because we just have a significant opportunity there our priority is going to be to do those things while at the same time balancing that with the cash returns that that we provide the shareholders I mentioned the 8 billion in share purchase this year the dividend has also gone up pretty significantly we pay a biannual dividend and and obviously we we feel that's super super important as a CFO I always view that one is really important because CFOs who cut the dividend tend to do well so with with that i i think we'll be able to balance out the cash return to shareholders at the same time uh investing in international content without being disruptive to the cash

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

return for shareholders okay um a big piece of content spending overall is still still clearly sports and you've talked about the importance of espn already to the company so when you think about your overall sports strategy and especially the linear network side of that business can you talk about how that plays into the overall lens of the priorities that that have been laid out in terms of that creativity quality and global scale yeah it's interesting you know because

Hugh Johnston, CFO

obviously there's there's always a lot of talk about you know what's the future of espn and and all of those things um if you sort of look at right now what what is the hottest and best thing in media it's live sports right i mean live sports is about the only thing left that can aggregate mass audience and aggregate it real time almost everything else in entertainment you know you choose when you choose you know how much you want to watch and as a result it's sort of very chopped up uh live sports still you know you you don't want to watch a game that you know the result of from three days ago i mean some people do but yeah that's not typical let's put it that way so to me live sports is just massively massively valuable to to us advert more importantly it's massively valuable to advertisers because they want these big aggregated audiences and and they value that tremendously and uh in in addition to that our competition knows it right and if you look at where competition is going they're all trying to sort of nose their way further and further into live sports so to me that's probably the best indication that when you have this incredibly valuable asset and it's integral to your your overall strategy why would you be doing anything other than trying to build on it over time and and that's exactly what we've done with espn uh interestingly enough if if you think about sort of the digital world of ESPN. ESPN Digital and Social had 197 million users last month. I mean, it's a huge number. Even ESPN, the app, had 28 million users. That's bigger than the next eight biggest apps combined. That's how impactful ESPN is. Now, what do we need to do with ESPN? We need to basically continue to improve and do a better job of integrating it into the overall streaming strategy because that that's where we're going to create big big value that's why we launched espn dtc and frankly you know to me that that is the differentiator one of the big differentiators we have so that my expectation is we're going to continue to basically take what's the biggest brand the world's biggest brand in sports and continue to build on it so that we can build this direct to consumer set of touch points that then are massively valuable to the Walt Disney Company from a lifetime value

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

perspective across a whole variety of spectrums. Okay, you touched on, mentioned valuable assets, so let's shift to parks. We think parks are clearly a central piece within this overall successful company. So when you think about the parks assets and delivering the live experience to the Disney fans that we talked about, especially in this screen-first virtual and growing AI world. Help us frame how you see the importance of those assets over the next few years as this develops.

Hugh Johnston, CFO

Yeah, it's interesting. And, you know, of course, everyone is sort of acutely focused on AI these days and sort of, you know, how it's going to change the world of screens. The interesting part to me in that is, in a world where people are more and more focused on their screen, And to me, that's a great thing for the Walt Disney Company, because obviously we're a big player in screens and delivering entertainment through screens. But it actually amplifies the value of real, shared, physical, in-person experiences as well. For the ability for a family to come together and emotionally connect, for a group of friends to come together, and basically connect in terms of a set of physical experiences, that is becoming more and more valuable because people are spending less time day-to-day interacting with each other. So those interaction moments, I think, are even more critically important than they are in the past, and that's what makes the parks business, I think, so much more valuable and the cruise business so much more valuable. And my expectation is, and that's why we're investing so much in it, we're going to be able to deliver terrific returns out of that set of assets over time because people do value that physical interaction. And frankly, our recent performance kind of proves the point that I'm making. I mean, even in a world where the consumer broadly is a little bit choppy, we've seen very, very strong results in the parks.

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

So you've talked about the consumer, so let's go there. Just in terms of any changes in terms of U.S. revenue or profit growth, You touched on it on the earnings call. But factoring in all of these geopolitical uncertainty, and especially the gas prices, it doesn't seem like you've seen any sort of indication yet. But how to think about that over the next couple months?

Hugh Johnston, CFO

Yeah, no, I mean, we honestly haven't seen the data at all. I mean, we talked about that on an earnings call and continue to see the fact that consumers are clearly connecting to our offerings. How much of that is this K-shaped consumer that obviously we tend to play more into in the parks, into one portion of the K-shape? How much of that is just once you commit to your family and you tell the kids you're going to Disney World, you're not going to back off that one without some severe repercussions, so people don't tend to do it. We're not immune to the macros, right? Everyone knows that. And if gas were to go to $8 a gallon or something like that, presumably that would have a lot of impacts. But right now we're seeing nothing either in the data that we have looking backward or in the bookings that we're seeing going forward. So it's what gave us the confidence to deliver the guide that we did is we do feel good about where we are and where we're going.

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

so maybe just to follow up on that international historically has been a big piece of the visitation especially at walt disney world right um so maybe just help us frame where we are in the life cycle of international since coming out of the pandemic and again given some of the the

Hugh Johnston, CFO

recent shoppiness there yeah so two i think two questions there one is about our international parks and the international parks continue to do very well right now not not seeing anything in the macros there. In fact, the Paris Park is actually having a really good moment right now. We just added World of Frozen there, and we're basically filling the park. So when you have that type of expansion and you can fill the park, you feel very, very good about that. And that sort of gets to the point around when we leverage our IP and take that IP and build big new attractions, not not little things the little things are fine too but it's these big new things that actually tend to just really bring in the investment or bring in the the uh the consumers and and frankly it it builds their engagement even stronger to that particular set of ip so international parks doing doing very very well right now uh international visitation to the u.s parks as we said on the call we think we're basically through the the overlap on that so you know it's been in the numbers for four quarters it's been rebased and we're not seeing further deterioration so from that perspective we we feel very very good in fact if anything outside of Canada we're actually seeing things improving so from that perspective certainly feel very positively about about where we're getting with with international visitation and again that's consistent with what we talked about in terms of the bookings and and the go forward for the business and why we're we're feeling so

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

optimistic great um so you also touched on this a little bit before but when thinking about that broad investment that that was laid out in terms of the parks investment in capex that that that's needed um or that you guys are looking to invest over the next 10 years 60 billion dollars uh on a global basis. So maybe just help us in the room here and understand the confidence level in this investment cycle, what you're seeing early, because we're already a couple years into this. And so how can we feel that the ROIC on this investment clearly has been very successful looking back over the past decade? So as we look forward, where is this growth going to come from?

Hugh Johnston, CFO

Yeah, and the good part is the stage that we're at, we can talk about this from two perspectives. One was, as we went into this investment cycle, we held ourselves to high standards in terms of the returns on all of these projects. And when I say high standards, I mean when the capex for the individual project comes floating in, if it's not hitting certain hurdle rates and certain returns, we don't do it. Just because we declared a number doesn't mean people get to go spend the money. So from the standpoint of approach, the approach was we're going to have high standards on these incremental investments. The second nice part about it is we're about three years into that. I think it was three years, it'll be three years in August. August of 23 was when that number was first put out there. So we're actually, some of the projects are already delivering returns. And what we're seeing is good returns on the projects, which you have some level of visibility to, because you get some data around individual attractions and cruise ships and things like that. But in addition to that, you can see the impact on the overall parks business, and the results there continue to be strong in terms of ROIC, in terms of margins, the growth in terms of revenue is continuing to be strong. So if you look at it in an aggregate, the performance is already proven in the numbers. It's my favorite kind of strategy, the one that we did three years ago, and we could talk about how good it's turned out. So from that perspective, we feel like these initiatives are really good and in a lot of ways, the best is yet to come in terms of the projects that we have coming in and the expectations we have for them.

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

Let's go there for a second. And so in terms of these new attractions, and it seems like next year it's really going to start to contribute more. So how do we think about that balance of attendance growth and the capacity that you're building out? And obviously pricing is usually a big focus here. So when we think about Walt Disney World and Disneyland specifically, that balance between attendance growth and pricing.

Hugh Johnston, CFO

Yeah, so as I've said before, you will see some – it's not going to be one or the other over any three- or four-year time frame. It's going to be both, and necessarily it needs to be both. The interesting part, and I would just offer this to you all as investors, there tends to be a lot of focus on attendance as a number. But the reality of it is when you have a big fixed asset like we do, we tend to actually use promotional activities to make sure that we're filling the park every day. So the capacity utilization on these parks is really, really high almost all the time because of the way that we can use, again, whether it's certain types of discounting or certain types of promotion. So we don't necessarily, without expansion, we don't necessarily have the ability to grow attendance massively because it's already filled up. Now, we could jam more people into the park, but then the guest experience declines, and that's actually bad for the brand. So you don't want us to do that, and we don't think it's a good idea either. So then when we add capacity, without a doubt, it creates the opportunity. We're seeing that in Paris right now to basically allow more people into the park. Now, the logical is, good analyst, you would ask the logical next question is, oh, but does that mean the yield is going to go down? Well, that's not been our experience, because when you put in a big new attraction, it actually, you see a surge in demand for it as well. So we tend to fill those things up really, really quickly without having to discount. And in fact, it actually offers some ability to charge more, because essentially you're offering something new that wasn't there before. I'm not going to get into specific guidance year by year, park by park, all that stuff. Frankly, I don't think it's all that useful to you. But the answer to sort of pull all the way back to your question is, yes, we have the ability to grow attendance as we expand capacity. I would expect to see both pricing and attendance growth over any three- or four-year time frame. But at the end of the day, I wouldn't overemphasize attendance as sort of a critical variable. I think we're going to do well with it. But to me, it is ultimately the combination of yield and attendance that matters the most. And how do you look at that? The old-fashioned metric. What's the revenue growth look like?

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

So taking all of that, the next natural question would be, as you build out the cruise ships, clearly you're looking to fill them and get the best yield out of it, too. So the cruise line fleet is set to more than double, to 13 ships, by the early part of next decade. So maybe just help us frame that ramp in revenue and obviously profits as each new ship is added and whether or not there is any cannibalization on the prior fleet.

Hugh Johnston, CFO

Yeah, it's interesting. First, to sort of step way back, just to kind of set expectations on what you just said, the easiest way to think about it is we're going to be adding about one ship per year between now and 2031. That's essentially the most simple way to think about this. With that, once we get through the pre-opening costs, which are meaningful but already in our base because we're already opening one ship a year, those ships basically start earning a return like that. Why do they do that? Because there really isn't much cannibalization. We mentioned on the earnings call, right now our capacity utilization or our fill rate on the ships is just as high this year as it was last year, despite all of the new capacity that we've added in. One of the things that I think is beneficial to what we're doing right now is we're starting to put ships outside of our traditional ports. Obviously, the adventure is in Singapore, and it's a massive ship. It's double the size of anything that we've done before, and we sold out a season of that ship in just a handful of days. The demand outside the U.S. for Disney experiences, not just Disney entertainment, is huge. And with that, by virtue of bringing more ships into other areas of the world, we're doing two things. Number one, we're fulfilling that demand and driving revenue. Number two, we know that experiences like being on a cruise tend to bond people more, so we're increasing their fandom, and with that, we're increasing the lifetime value of all of these consumers that we're pulling in. So put it all together, I mean, it's a superb strategy and one that I think is going to benefit the Walt Disney Company for a very, very long time to come. This is one that has got a long, long runway attached to it.

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

Okay, good to hear. So as we start to wrap up, maybe taking you back, you joined Disney about, I think, two and a half years ago now, spending many years at PepsiCo. So any lessons that you learned from the prior work that you really are applying to Disney after being here a couple of years and how that's positioning the company over the next, call it, three to five years?

Hugh Johnston, CFO

Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing and the biggest commonality that I saw at PepsiCo and I certainly see at Disney even more so is just the power of these types of longstanding global brands. These brands have such a remarkable resonance with consumers. And if I thought the Pepsi brands were, you know, they resonated with consumers, Disney is sort of next level in terms of emotional attachment, people feeling so strongly about these brands and sticking with them through their lifetime. So that's sort of the continuity that I see. The difference between, I won't talk about Pepsi, but the consumer products business is, when you have a good brand, one of the things you have to do is innovate around that brand. And in the consumer product space, the innovation tends to be somewhat incremental in nature, flavors and forms and things like that. The innovation at Disney is really inventing whole new storylines. It's a level of creativity that you don't really see elsewhere. And that ability to sort of innovate and bring those new stories to life has the benefit of expanding the brand as opposed to just letting the brand sit as it is. And in addition to that, because of the nature of our asset profile, that new creativity then plays its way through the entire value creation set of businesses or monetization set of businesses that we have that, frankly, is, I think, pretty unique. You don't really see that much elsewhere. So, you know, it's funny, when we talk about the various businesses inside of Disney, one of the things I'm fond of saying is, you know, we have businesses that are outstanding alone, but they're even better together. And that's kind of, to me, the ultimate way to think about Disney is outstanding alone, better together.

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

Okay. So anything that you want to leave us with in terms of what isn't fully appreciated, hopefully if you're back here again next year, what do you think investors are going to be most surprised about over the next, call it 12 months? I think it's just going to be the consistent

Hugh Johnston, CFO

earnings compounding. We're just going to continue to deliver that. And if you believe in that compounding, you probably look at the stock price and say, man, that's low relative to what it should be so that's what I'd leave you with it is I think the stock price is attractive and we're betting eight billion dollars this year to to on that so I think there is a real opportunity here all right with that Hugh Ben Dan

Alexia Quadrani, Head of Investor Relations

thank you all for being here thank you Robert appreciate it