Disney announced pricing for its new streaming service on Thursday, and it’s surprisingly low: $6.99 per month and $69.99 annually (or $5.83 per month).The service won’t include any advertisements.
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Food and entertainment specialist, Dave &Buster’s, just ended a difficult fiscal year but signs are hopeful for the year to come.
This quarter the company benefited from favorable weather and calendar shifts that moved important holidays like Christmas and New Year from weekend to weekdays.Special mention goes to improved menu and popular menu items that brought market share gains.
The video gaming sector also benefitted from its shift toward offering exclusive branded games, including hit virtual reality titles. ‘Dragon frost’VR joined ‘Jurassic World’, ‘Halo’, and ‘Connect 4 Hoops’ as customer traffic drivers.
Previously, the firm had expressed doubts about how the company’s ‘Stubs A-List’ subscription program would sit with customers.
The ‘Stubs A-List’, costing $24 per month, allows subscribers to see up to three movies per week, with no blackout dates.The company launched Stubs A-List program after its MoviePass’ program failed last year.
‘Avengers: Endgame’s' advance ticket sales helped restore faith in the company’s subscription policies that so far have been struggling since last year.
Analysts at Cowen upgraded Disney stock, as they expect that the entertainment giant’s upcoming video streaming platform and the next ‘Star Wars’ would prove to be strong tailwinds.
Cowen raised its rating on Disney to outperform from market perform, and also increased its 12-month price target to $131 from $102.He estimates a $3 billion calendar year operating profit to come from Disney’s movie production unit Studio, while being particularly optimistic about the Q4 calender year 2019 releases ‘Frozen 2’ and ‘Star Wars Episode IX’.
Cowen is also hopeful that Disney’s new streaming platform “is well positioned to have an extremely strong launch that surpasses consensus subscriber expectations”.
AMC Entertainment's stock climbed +10% Monday, following B. Riley FBR analyst’s upgrade on the company.
Analyst Eric Wold raised his rating to buy from neutral, citing impressive advance ticket sales for the movie 'Avengers: Endgame', which he believes should be a substantial boost to AMC’s business.He also sees strong potential in the movie theatre chain’s Stubs A-List program, which allows moviegoers to watch up to three films per week.
Wold seems to be viewing AMC’s Stubs A-list as a meaningful substitute to Movie Pass’ subscription service, for cinephiles.
After only 25 days in theaters, Disney’s (DIS) ‘Captain Marvel’ crossed the $1 billion mark last Tuesday with $645 million of earnings through international ticket sales.Domestically, the film earned $358 million.
Similarly, other superhero films like DC’s “Aquaman” earned 70% of its $1.14 billion from markets outside the U.S., as did “Avengers: Infinity War,” which garnered $2.04 billion last year, more than 66% of which was from foreign markets.
But credit should also go ‘Infinity War,’ which hinted at its cliff hanger ending that only a female superhero could defeat Thanos.
Tickets for ‘Avengers: Endgame’ also sold quickly, as evidenced by Atom Tickets’ sales of this movie at three times more than ‘Infinity War’ last year.
The Marvel movies have collectively earned more than $18.5 billion, or an average of $880 million per film.
Viacom had also previously said that it offered options to AT&T to reduce customers’ bills. AT&T had hit back claiming that some of Viacom’s channels were losing popularity, and called it “a serial bad actor” in negotiations with pay-TV companies.
If the dispute hadn’t been resolved, DirecTV customers could have lost access to Viacom channels like Nickelodeon, BET, MTV, Comedy Central and Paramount."We are pleased to announce a renewed Viacom-AT&T contract that includes continued carriage of Viacom services across multiple AT&T platforms and products," the companies said in a statement Monday.
Viacom shares surged as much as +8% on the news.
High-stakes meetings continue on the Fox lots after the $71B Disney/Fox deal, as CEO Lachlan Murdoch assembled the employees of new Fox (FOX +2.8%, FOXA +3.3%) for a town-hall gathering.
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Less than a month before WrestleMania 35 in East Rutherford, New Jersey, World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. WWE 3.45% stock ripped higher Thursday after the company got its highest Wall Street price target yet.
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Roku shares have a quick rebound on Thursday, following Needham analyst Laura Martin’s upped her price target on the stock.
While re-iterating her “buy” rating on the media streaming device maker’s stock, Martin raised the price target to $85 from $65.The analyst indicated several factors supporting her decisions, such as Roku’s user growth opportunities from upcoming streaming platforms of Walt Disney and Apple, advertising revenue to non-linear TV, and possibilities that the company might be acquired.
Shares of Roku gained more than +3% on Thursday - partly offsetting their -14% decline the previous day following downgrades by analysts at Macquarie Research and Loop Capital on overvaluation concerns.
The deal involves Disney’s acquisition of Fox’s entertainment assets in exchange for Disney divesting Fox's 22 regional sports networks.
In light of the agreement, the companies confirmed that they are expecting Fox to distribute all issued and outstanding common shares of Fox Corp. to the 21CF shareholders at about 8 a.m.ET on March 20, 2019.
Holders of the 21CF common stock will then be given a deadline of 5 p.m. on March 14 to elect the form of consideration they wish to receive in the acquisition.
According to the terms of the deal, Disney is likely to pick up the studio, a controlling stake in Hulu, a suite of entertainment channels like FX and Nat Geo and some other assets.
Roku stock was downgraded to “sell” from “hold” by Loop Capital analysts, causing the shares to lose more than -4% in pre-market trading Wednesday.
Loop Capital analysts argued that shares of the digital media player/streaming service company were overvalued, and therefore they could no longer hold the “hold” rating.
Last month, Roku reported its latest quarterly earnings of 5 cents a share beating analysts’ expectations.However, analysts at Wedbush at the time downgraded the stock to “neutral” from “outperform”, citing possibilities of higher spending by Roku and therefore lower operating margins than the analysts’ had previously estimated.
Buckingham analyst Matthew Harrigan cited heated competition in the video streaming space as a crucial factor behind the rating downgrade.
Traditional, long-standing media/entertainment giants are looking to expand their digital presence, which could potentially intensify competition to current streaming leader Netflix. Walt Disney will roll out its streaming platform (called Disney+), while AT&T (via WarnerMedia) is set to launch its own by the second half of the year.Comcast is planning to enter the streaming market in 2020 through NBC Universal.
What’s more, Amazon Prime has apparently been upping the ante against rival Netflix.
Streaming giant Netflix has acquired rights to the 1967 multigenerational masterpiece novel ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by the Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.Rodrigo and his brother Gonzalo Garcia Barcha will act as executive producers on the project, which is set to be filmed predominantly in Colombia.
A Spanish TV series is not unprecedented in Netflix’s viewership history.
Disney CEO Bob Iger saw his potential pay for the year cut by $13.5 million on Monday.
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Advertisers don't seem to mind the low ratings.
These 'pod' advertising spots will be 30 seconds estimated to be worth between $2-$2.6 million each.For example, this year’s Super Bowl boasted a $5.25 million price tag for 30-second ads.
Viewers are expected to see advertisements from big business houses like Cadillac, Google, Rolex, Verizon, Walmart, Budweiser, McDonald’s, Paramount and Walt Disney Studios, among others.
On Monday, streaming giant Netflix cancelled its two superhero shows—The Punisher and Jessica Jones—marking an end to the five-year licensing agreement with Disney-owned Marvel.
This, however, does not mean that Netflix is getting rid of its superhero content, as confirmed by its recent launch of The Umbrella Academy—a story of estranged siblings with superhuman powers.Millarworld, a comic book company acquired by Netflix in 2017, will be developing its first superhero series for the streaming giant called the Jupiter’s Legacy.
But will the end of contract with Disney prove costly for Netflix?
Research reveals that licensed content has attracted more customers to Netflix than its original shows.
China will generate more data than the United States by 2025 as it pushes into new technologies such as the so-called Internet of Things, according to a new report.Read more...
But, the entertainment giant expressed caution against a possible dent in profit as the company launches its own streaming service Disney+ and therefore potentially lose some of its licensing revenues.
The company’s earnings during the three months ending December came in at $1.84 per share, outpacing analysts’ expected $1.55 a share.They were, however, -3% lower compared to the year-ago quarter.
Revenue at $15.303 billion was higher than analysts’ estimate of $15.1 billion.
In April, Disney will launch its streaming platform Disney+ which will show movies and its original content.
Disney’s latest fiscal quarter report confirms forecast-beating earnings per share ($1.84 per share versus an estimate of $1.55 per share) and revenue ($15.30 billion versus $15.14 billion expected).Revenue in Disney's media networks business, which includes ESPN, rose 7% to $5.92 billion in the first quarter, compared to the year-earlier period, while its parks business was up 5% to $6.82 billion.
This impressive outcome may be attributed to Disney’s increased sales in media networks like the ESPN+, which has doubled its subscriber count in the last five months to stand at 2 million paid subscribers, as well as its theme parks businesses.
The company’s CEO reiterated that Disney’s foray into online streaming services amid growing competition from streaming giants like Netflix (NFLX) remains their top priority, as they will continue to strengthen their direct-to-customers offerings.
The number of consumers preferring streaming services at a cheap cost to traditional cable packa